


The Missing Worlds

by Mikkeneko



Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-19
Updated: 2014-01-08
Packaged: 2017-10-15 18:43:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 78,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/163758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mikkeneko/pseuds/Mikkeneko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While searching for Sakura's feathers, the travelers face a dilemma: in order to move on to the next world, they will have to leave one of their companions behind. What will they find in the new worlds now open to them, and what will happen to the one who stays behind and waits…?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This story is set in the uncertain period after Shara, but before Recourt; in other words, in the same never-neverland that the second season of the anime mostly took place in. 
> 
> This chronicle of the worlds that they pass through is referred to as the "missing" worlds for two reasons; because they are a collection of worlds that are 'missing' from the original series, like lost chapters, and also because they are worlds they go through while one or another member of their party is also 'missing.'
> 
> This is a fic I have had planned for a while, but other projects always got in the way of actually writing this. I was inspired for this idea this because I was surprised, when reading through fics in the fandom, at how few stories actually have the characters meet alternate versions of themselves in the worlds they travel through. There are a few, but I would have expected more, and most of them use the alter-selves as a plot device rather than exploring them in depth. So I wanted to write a story that plays with the idea of how the characters might have turned out in alternate dimensions, and how the others in the party would react upon meeting them (without the usual meeting-myself awkardness getting in the way!)

It was a cold, dripping night when they'd arrived, in the middle of a forest with no shelter in sight. That alone would have been an inauspicious start, but then Mokona had told them - for the fourth world in a row - that there was no trace of a feather in this world either.

First there had been the creepy world with the soulless girl where the sun never rose; then the island world with all the pirates, where Syaoran had encountered a young alternate version of his own father. Then of course the world where they had all been transformed into children (which Kurogane had sworn them all on pain of death never to speak of again.) They were all beginning to get a little agitated.

"This is bullshit!" Kurogane was the first to explode, unsurprisingly. "How much time are we gonna waste on dud worlds? Can't you do your damn job right, you useless pork bun?"

"Kurogane-san, please don't yell," Sakura said timidly. "I'm sure Mokona is doing the best that she can…"

"Mokona is trying very hard!" the white creature seconded, bouncing up from between Sakura's hand. "Traveling between worlds isn't easy! You have to be careful not to arrive in outer space, or under the ground, or in the water or anything!"

"You keep taking us to these useless worlds," Kurogane continued to fume, stomping around in the squelching undergrowth. "This wasn't the deal, dammit! You're supposed to take us to where the feathers are! Oi, mage! You know more about this dimension travel magic stuff. Can't you do anything to put us right?"

"Nope!" Fai said cheerfully, waving his hand in denial. "In the first place, even if I could still do magic, I could never transport all five of us on my best day. In the second place, even if I could transport us, I have no way of detecting the feathers. And in the third place, even if I could detect them and transport us towards them, why should I? _My_ wish was only to go to as many different worlds as possible. If we don't find a feather, that's even better for me, because then we can leave quickly."

"That's all great for you, you lazy selfish oaf," Kurogane groused. "But what about the rest of us who are getting cheated? The damned witch isn't keeping up her end of the bargain!"

"Actually," Fai put in with a sly grin. "If I remember correctly, _your_ wish is to return your home world, ne? Why should it matter to you whether the worlds we pass through in the meantime have a feather or not? I'd think you'd want to change worlds as many times as possible, as quickly as possible, so that you'll get home sooner."

Kurogane snarled wordlessly at his aggravating companion; he hated being reminded of his ongoing exile. He hated even more having it rubbed in his face that although he'd started out the journey that way - not caring about anybody's troubles but his own, focused only on the journey's ending. Fai was right, damn him, he _shouldn't_ care about anything but getting home. It shouldn't matter to him how many days or worlds they went without getting closer to restoring the princess' memories.

But it was hard to maintain that tunnel-vision focus in the face of the kids' needs and struggles, hard not to get invested in the search for the feathers that had consumed his life. He spun around and pointed towards them, standing hand in hand in the misting rain. "Well, fine then! But _you're_ the ones who're getting cheated when we don't find new feathers. You should get what you paid for!"

"I - I would like to be able to remember more," Sakura admitted, sounding troubled. "But, I didn't really pay any price to the Time-Space Witch, did I? I was asleep when we met for the first time. Everybody else paid a price, but I didn't. So I don't feel like I really have any right to complain about how long it takes, when she's doing such a huge kindness for me."

Nobody met her eyes. They all knew the truth of the price she had paid, the pieces of childhood memories that would be lost to her forever. But Sakura herself was unaware of the loss, just as she was unaware of exactly what price Syaoran had paid in the same moment.

"I promised that I would travel for as long as it takes, go anywhere, do anything to restore Sakura-hime's memories," Syaoran said sturdily. They exchanged a long, dewey-eyed glance, and Syaoran squeezed her hand tightly and said, "But - but I'd really like for things to go faster. I'm worried about how long it's been since we got the last feather."

"Perhaps you should call the witch, Syaoran-kun," Fai suggested. "You're a paying customer, after all. At the very least maybe she can tell us whether something is wrong."

"Something is _obviously_ wrong," Kurogane grumbled. "Not that I think she'll be a damn bit of help. She'll probably want another price, just to deliver on what she promised the first time!"

"Okay," Syaoran agreed, and he looked towards Mokona. "Mokona? Can you call Yuuko for us?"

"Hmph," the white creature pouted. "Mokona will do it, but only because Syaoran asked! Mokona won't do anything for grumpy Kurogane-mongrel!"

"What did you call me?" Kurogane roared, as the gem on Mokona's forehead began to glow. The beam of light shot out, then expanded into a glowing circular window hanging in midair. Drops of rain fell through it, briefly illuminated in the circle of light, but they did not touch the picture on the other side.

"Mokona?" Yuuko said, turning and looking surprised to see them. She was dressed in a more casual outfit than the last time they'd seen her, with her hair down from its elaborate styling; a glass of something probably alcoholic was resting in her left hand. "Ah, hello, you four! I'm surprised to hear from you again. What's going on with my favorite travelers? Perhaps you have a White Day gift to give me?" she asked with a sly grin.

"Like hell!" Kurogane exploded. "I told you she'd try to extract more out of us! When she can't even keep a simple bargain!"

"Sorry, can you speak up? I thought I heard a feral dog yapping in the background," Yuuko said airily. "Now what seems to be the trouble?"

She continued to ignore Kurogane's grumbling in the background while Syaoran and Sakura explained the problem. Gradually Yuuko's face turned concerned and thoughtful, then resigned.

"Mokona," she asked the creature directly. "Can you tell me what's happening when you shift between worlds? You ought to be able to home in on the worlds that have feathers in them."

"Mokona tries!" the critter cried. "Mokona _can_ sense the worlds that have feathers in them, and tries to go there. But _something_ always gets in the way! Mokona tries and tries, but something is blocking that world, and instead we slide off to the side into another world that's nearby."

"Ah," Yuuko said in a tone of enlightenment. "I thought this might be a problem eventually."

"You know what's happening?" Sakura said, leaning in from the side at the same time Syaoran asked "What should we do to fix it?"

Yuuko sat back and folded her arms, raising one hand to tap a finger against her lips. "This will take some explaining," she said. "I'm sure that you four have noticed, as I warned you you might, that you encounter the same people many different times in different worlds?"

"Yes, we met my brother and the High Priest!" Sakura said in excitement, as Syaoran nodded. "And Shougo-san, and Sorata and Arashi-san, and others as well."

"That's so," Yuuko agreed. "And did any of you ever wonder why it is that you have never encountered alternate versions of yourself, in any world that you came to?"

"Ah," Fai said in a sudden tone of enlightenment. "You think that's the problem?"

"Most likely," Yuuko answered. "It was statistically likely that it would happen eventually."

"What?" Kurogane demanded. "What are you talking about?"

"I guess I never thought about it," Sakura admitted. "But what does that have to do with us not finding any feathers in these worlds?"

"Different people across different worlds share the same souls," Yuuko explained. "As people die in one world, they are born into another in an endless cycle.

"In the course of all your traveling, it was inevitable that sooner or later you would come across a world that has some version of at least one of you still alive. But it is impossible for two people with the same soul to be in a world at the same time. If you were to try to enter that world, both of you would instantly die. Mokona instinctively protects you from that danger, and shunts you into a nearby world instead."

"But what can we do?" Sakura cried.

"Are you saying that we'll just have to give up on those feathers?" Syaoran exclaimed, visibly agitated; the words 'give up' were not really in his vocabulary.

"There is no way to change the fundamental laws of the universe," Yuuko replied. "But, perhaps we can find a workaround."

"Oh, what?" Sakura said.

Yuuko didn't answer her right away, instead turning her dark-lidded eyes on her creation. "Mokona," she said, "bring the family _home_ , if you please."

"Okay!" Mokona chirped, and then leapt from Sakura's hands; bright wings sprang from her back, and the magic circle sprang to live beneath their feet. Before any of the travelers had time to protest, the dreary forest surroundings shifted and warped around them, and they were being hurtled into a new world.

Or - perhaps not so new. When they picked themselves up again, they found themselves in a spacious wooden room, floored by tatami mats. Sliding doors gave way to other, similar rooms, crowded with a multitude of clutter. Something about the design of the building, the dusty smell of the building, seemed familiar.

It was Kurogane, with his keen talent for observation, who made the connection. "Wait a minute, this is the same shop we saw when Tomoyo first sent me to you!" he exclaimed. "Does that mean we're back where we started? In that weird other Japan?"

"Not exactly," Yuuko's voice said; her image flickered back into place. "The shop is its own world, with its own set of rules. Think of it as a sort of waiting room between different dimensions. Mokona was created here, and so it is a place it can always return to."

"Okay, but what good does that do us?" Kurogane demanded in exasperation. "There aren't any feathers here, anyway."

"No, but this is a safe and neutral place," Yuuko said, "where each of you can remain - by themselves - while the others go on to the missing worlds without them."

There was a stunned moment, then several voices burst out in protest. "I can't leave Sakura behind!" Syaoran was saying in a shocked voice, while Fai chimed in "Is that entirely a good idea?" and Kurogane roared, "Like hell I'm going to let you lot go off and get in trouble without me!"

"It's not an ideal situation, but it's the only way," Yuuko said, raising her voice above the hubbub. "Once there is no danger of bringing a duplicate self into a world, Mokona will be able to enter freely. I assure you that this shop is completely safe; you can each take turns staying here, while the others visit each world in turn. Once you have retrieved the feather from that world, Mokona will return you here."

There was a subdued and thoughtful silence, each of them coming to the unhappy conclusion that this really was the best way to solve their dilemma.

"I'll stay behind first," Sakura said, putting on a brave smile. "After all, I'm the least useful. I'm not much good at searching, and if there's any fighting, I won't be able to help at all."

"That's not true, Princess!" Syaoran protested vehemently. "You've always been very helpful to us. Even if all you can do at any given time is wait for us and smile when we return, that's a great help."

"But it seems like right now, I'll be most useful staying here," Sakura pointed out, her resolve gaining strength. "I have faith that you can find the feather quickly and return back here, and I'll be waiting for you."

That had settled the matter, although Syaoran had argued some more before giving in. Unhappy but resigned, he stood with the two older men while Sakura waited off to the side outside of the range of Mokona's magic circle.

Syaoran turned a pleading gaze on Yuuko. "Are you sure she'll be safe here?" he asked for the third time.

"Very sure," Yuuko answered. "As I said, this shop is in a dimension that does not really interact in a normal way with other worlds. Nothing can come in from the outside without my permission."

"Just don't go through any boxes or jars without permission," Fai admonished Sakura with a smile. "This _is_ a magical shop, after all, and I'm quite sure that some of the items stored here could be dangerous if you started fooling around with them."

"I'm not sure it's necessary to tell her that, when it sounds much more like something you would do," Yuuko said dryly.

"I'll be careful, I promise!" Sakura said sincerely. "You have to promise you'll be careful, too! I'll be waiting for you to get back safely!"

"Don't worry so much. We can more than take care of ourselves," Kurogane said in his usual gruff tone, but Sakura knew that he was trying to reassure her anyway.

"Let's go!" Mokona chirped out, and tipped her head backwards as the lines of golden light began to form around them and the edges of reality began to warp.

It was strange, seeing the others prepare to leave and knowing that she would not be going with them. She could understand Syaoran's anxiety at being separated. But it was made easier by the times before that she had watched and waited for them to come back to her, and she trusted Yuuko; if Yuuko said that the travelers would be able to return through Mokona, then she was sure that was true.

Now the only thing left to do was wait, and worry about what kind of world they were going into next. What kind of dangers they might face in finding the next feather, and what kind of people…

"Yuuko-san," Sakura said, after the swirling winds of the transport had faded. "You said that they're going to a world where there are other versions of us, right? So this time, the world they're going to has another me?"

"Yes," the witch answered softly, stepping through the doorway. "If they could not enter it before, but are able to enter it without your presence in the party, then that means somewhere in that world will be another version of you."

Sakura was quiet for a moment, then she asked softly, "Do you think they'll meet? The others, and the other version of me, I mean."

Yuuko raised her eyebrows, and did not answer immediately. "There are many different kinds of worlds," she answered at last, indirectly. "Some, like the world where I was born, are very large, with billions of living human souls. Some are much smaller, with only a few villages, or cities, or kingdoms of people. Large or small, the odds against meeting up with one specific person out of the many thousands - especially in so short a time as they will be in that world - are astronomical."

"Oh," Sakura said, trying to decide if she was relieved or disappointed. "So they won't meet another me, then?"

"I cannot know whether they will or they won't," Yuuko said, "but I do know one thing. There is only _hitsuzen._ If two people's paths are meant to cross, then they will, no matter how unlikely it may be in the abstract. If they meet with the other version of you, Sakura, it's because that meeting was destined to happen for a reason."

Sakura considered that for a while, then nodded acceptance. "Thank you, Yuuko-san," she said. "For everything you've done for us, I mean. We would never be able to go on this journey without you, or ever find any of my feathers."

"There is no need to thank me, child," Yuuko said softly, and there was an odd pain in her eyes. "You can rest assured that I have received adequate payment in kind for providing the means for the journey. That, too, is hitsuzen."

"Oh, but I'm not just talking about that," Sakura exclaimed. "I mean, you've been so kind and helpful ever since then. Like with this problem - we would have been stuck going to the wrong worlds for ages if not for you. You told us what was going on, and you're letting us use your shop to try to fix the problem. Isn't there anything I can do to help repay you for that?"

Yuuko smiled. "Well," she said. "If it comes to that, I _could_ use some help with the chores around this place! The dust _does_ build up, you know. My assistant, Watanuki, will be here in another few hours, but frankly he grumbles and bangs around so much that he raises the dust more than he cleans it. Would you lend him your aid?"

"Oh, I'd love to!" Sakura exclaimed, perking up more at the thought of dusting and cleaning than she ever would have expected to in her life as a princess and Clow. But at the very least, it would give her something to do other than to sit and wait; and to wonder what Syaoran was doing now, and to hope that all her friends would keep safe.


	2. Water World I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone gets very wet, and Syaoran makes a new friend.

They were surrounded by a tunnel of undulating golden light, filled by a rushing sensation of traveling without moving. Colorful images flickered past, too distorted to make out through the thick rippling waves, but Syaoran's attention was not on the by-now familiar magic of transport. Instead, he was preoccupied with thoughts of Sakura.

Despite all of Yuuko's assurances, he was still anxious to be separated from her. Not so much for the worry that she would be in danger while he was gone, but for the persistent fear that he would find the feather, but then lose it before he could get back to give it to her. The moments between when he grasped the feathers and when he was able to return them to her body always filled him with an irrational anxiety, like someone was going to snatch the feather out of his hands at the last moment. That feeling would be ten times worse now; and what if they didn't find a feather in this world at all? He dreaded the thought of returning to Sakura empty-handed. She would forgive him, though. She was so kind. She would smile at him anyway and she would -

He was startled out of his preoccupied daydreams when the strange feeling of vertigo turned abruptly to pure free fall, and then his feet hit something cold and yielding as all four of the travelers hit the water's surface with a massive splash.

The momentum of their fall was enough to push him completely under the surface; it took a moment before he could flail gasping and sputtering to the surface. A wild look around located two pale bobbing heads in the water nearby; Fai and Mokona. It was a few seconds more before Kurogane's dark hair crested the waves, clawing to the surface with a roar like a behemoth from the deep.

"You useless thing!" Kurogane thundered, spitting water and sending splashing arcs everywhere as he flailed for purchase. "What was all that bullshit about how 'transport is a difficult art,' huh? What happened to not landing us in the fucking water?"

"Mokona tries!" the white creature protested. Her small size and light weight at least enabled her to bob on the surface of the water without too much trouble. "But this is where the feather's waves were strongest!"

Syaoran made his way over to his companions with a little effort, treading water in front of Mokona. "But there is definitely a feather in this world?" he asked urgently.

"Definitely!" Mokona nodded in miniature emphasis.

 

"How far away it is?" Fai prompted her. A stronger wave than the others threatened to toss Mokona away from them; Fai's long hands reached out and deftly plucked the little creature out of the water, placing her on the top of his head like a hat. "There, that should do it," he said cheerily.

"It's close," Mokona said in a hushed voice. "Not very far away at all. But... Mokona isn't sure..."

"Not sure of what?" Syaoran asked.

"Which direction it is," she admitted. "One moment the waves are coming from that direction -" a white ear pointed off in the direction away from the sun - "and then they're coming from over there!" The other ear cocked off at a sixty-degree angle. "It's like the feather flickers."

"Great," Kurogane groaned. "It's never easy, is it? It can never be fucking simple."

"At least we know there is a feather this time," Syaoran said firmly. "So we didn't leave her behind for nothing. At least now we have a place to start."

"Speaking of which," Fai said, "before we do anything else, don't you think we'd better find some place we can get out of the water?"

That gave them all pause. Above them was a blue sky spotted with white clouds; the sun was slanted in the sky, but since they didn't know what time of day they'd arrived it was impossible to gauge the direction. A landscape of silver-capped blue-green waves of water stretched out in every direction, without a rock or a distant shore to break the horizon.

Suddenly, Syaoran reversed his opinion. He was just as happy that Sakura hadn't come to this world after all. "Mokona," he said a touch nervously, "Couldn't you have put us down somewhere closer to shore?"

Mokona's face scrunched up doubtfully. "Mokona can't sense land," she said, "just feathers. But usually it just happens."

Syaoran splashed a little higher, but still couldn't see anything. He took a gulp of air and let himself fall under the surface, opening his eyes under the water and squinting into the distance. The water was surprisingly clear for an ocean, a shimmering jade-green expanse that disappeared gradually into darkness below. But in every direction he looked, he could not see any massive rocks cresting the surface of the water.

"Doesn't anyone live in this world?" he asked when he came up for air, wiping water out of his face. At least it didn't seem too salty, and didn't sting his face or eyes.

"Oh, there's definitely life here," Fai said unexpectedly. "It's just that it's all down."

Mokona nodded solemnly. "The same direction as the feather," she said. "That's down, too."

"Well that's great!" Kurogane groused. "What are we supposed to do? 'Down' is no good for us, and we can't keep swimming like this forever."

Something about the way he said that made Syaoran take a closer look at the warrior. He was treading water, as they were, but much harder and faster with every stroke. Syaoran suddenly realized that the weight of Kurogane's armor, as well as his sword, was dragging him down and making it much more difficult to stay afloat. He was already breathing a little harder than the rest of them.

He exchanged an anxious look with Fai, who tilted his head and narrowed his eyes slightly in acknowledgement. "Hyuu," he said in a musing tone, "what a predicament. Kuro-chama, maybe you should take off your armor? And your sword -"

"No," Kurogane growled in a flat voice.

"But if it's weighing you down -"

"If I take it off now I'll never find it again," Kurogane snapped. "And then what will we do the next time we get into a fight? Don't say stupid things."

"But, Kurogane-san," Syaoran interjected. "There's no land within sight anywhere, which means that even if we can find some quickly, it will be a long swim to safety. Will you really be all right?"

"I'll be fine," Kurogane stressed. "Let's just get started in finding that damn land, okay?"

"So only you get to say stupid things?" Fai snorted. "Really, Kuro-chama, you're only postponing the inevitable. Sooner or later you're going to have to take off that heavy armor, so why wait and tire yourself out unnecessarily?"

"I wouldn't have to take off anything," Kurogane returned, "if you would just be willing to use your damn magic for a change."

"No," Fai said simply; and although he was smiling when he said it, it was as flat and final as Kurogane's refusal a few minutes before.

"Why the hell not? Armor or no armor, we're all going to drown if we can't find land quickly enough," Kurogane pointed out. "If you could be bothered to make an effort for once, we wouldn't be in trouble at all."

"I already told you I'm not going to use my magic," Fai said.

"Well, I already told you that I'm not going to drop my sword," Kurogane said firmly.

"Kuro-weighty's digging his own grave, then -"

Syaoran rolled his eyes. When the older men got going like this, it could last for hours. "Will you two just stop being so stubborn for once?" he demanded out loud.

The two older men looked at him in astonishment, then shared a glance, both of them raising an eyebrow in disbelief.

"Sorry, I must have gotten water in my ear, did I just hear Syaoran-kun calling us stubborn?"

"Bit of the pot calling the kettle black, isn't it?"

Syaoran blushed in embarrassment; he supposed he didn't really have much of a leg to stand on there. "All right," he said hurriedly. "I have an idea. Mokona, you said you feel the feather's waves from two directions, right?"

Mokona nodded solemnly. "It's really hard to pin down," she said.

"Wherever the feather is, the people of this world probably are too," Syaoran reasoned. "So logically, if there's going to be an island or a ship or whatever, it will be in one of those directions that you sense a feather. I'm going to swim in that direction to scout."

"Shouldn't we all go?" Fai asked. "We can reach land sooner that way."

"No," Syaoran said quickly, "because we don't know which is the right direction. I'll just go far enough to find out what's there, then come back. If I find something, we can all go together; if I don't, we can all go in the other direction together." The truth was, it was Kurogane he was worried about. Just treading water was enough of an effort for the big man; swimming long distances would be even worse.

The others raised a few more objections to his plans; but since there was really nothing else for it, they decided to let him go. No sooner had he set off in the direction away from the sun than he heard their voices fall to arguing again.

Syaoran pulled strongly through the waves, the sun at his back and goggles pulled down over his eyes as he swam in the direction Mokona had sensed the feather. He'd left Mokona behind for the same reason he hadn't wanted Kurogane to come with him in the first place; if things got really bad and the warrior completely exhausted himself, Mokona would need to be nearby to pull him to safely. He just hoped that he could find something before he got out of range of Mokona's translating ability, or he wouldn't be able to communicate with anyone even if he could find them.

The goggles over his eyes protected him both from the dazzle of the sun off the waves and the splash of the water when he ducked his head under the waves to look around. Mokona had said the feather was down, but Syaoran couldn't even see the sea floor from here; just the endless expanse of shifting green ocean broken by the drifting, blurry tops of seaweed forests.

The emptiness, the endlessness of the waves and flat horizon were beginning to make Syaoran feel a bit of claustrophobic panic. He was a strong swimmer, and he could keep going for a while, but sooner or later they had to find land or they'd really be in trouble. He wasn't so much in fear for their lives - if it came down to a life or death choice, Mokona could take them out of the world before they drowned. But that would mean abandoning the world without finding the feather; and Mokona might never be able to come back here.

He almost wished he could send the others away with Mokona now, and leave him behind to search for the feathers. It was his own responsibility, anyway - the others shouldn't have to risk themselves in a hopeless situation. But Mokona could only transport out of this world once; then there would be no way to get back to Sakura with the feather once he found it. That thought, more than the burn of fatigue in his muscles or the weight of water against his chest, filled him with choking panic.

Must find it, he thought grimly, arms sweeping around in front of him as he plowed determinedly through the waves. Have to find that feather. It has to be somewhere. He couldn't bear the thought of going back to his princess empty-handed. With the thought of her face firmly in mind, he swam onwards.

On the next duck of his face underneath the surface, he caught sight of a silhouetted figure moving fluidly through the shifting bars of sunlight under the waves. He stopped, flailing his arms back a bit as he tried to steady his position, then took a deep breath and slipped under the water again to try to get a better look. It was some kind of sea animal, sinuous and graceful in its curves - and it was coming right for him.

For a moment he panicked, wondering his odds of fighting off a shark or other hungry sea-creature in its own element - but then he steadied himself. It wasn't like he could run away, after all. If it tried to eat him, he could fight it off; but until then, there was no reason to attack a harmless animal just for being curious.

The animal moved deceptively fast, its powerful finned tail pushing it through the water far faster than he was able to swim. It surged up through the water just a few meters away, and he hastily backstroked and raised his head for a gasp of air just as it breached the surface of the water and arched over his head, landing with a mighty splash behind him.

The sea creature circled him once more, as if wondering whether or not to try for a bite, and Syaoran tensed himself in readiness. It fetched up beside him, and raised a head streaming with shimmering water from the waves to regard him with frank curiosity face-to-face.

Face-to-face. Sakura's face, her familiar sweet features, ginger hair darkened to brown with the wet. But instead of Sakura's leaf-green eyes, these eyes were a brilliant aquamarine color, the lines between pupil and iris and white softened by a translucent membrane. Human head, neck, arms and shoulders, with a torso patterned with copper-colored scales blending into a long, powerful tail like a dolphin's. Delicate, feathery streamers trailed from the ends of the split-finned tail, and more fins trailed gently from her arms and down her back. They moved around her like a dance as she turned in the water, and regarded him with a friendly, curious smile.

"Hello," the mermaid chirped, oblivious to his stunned shock. "What happened to your tail? Didn't it hurt?"

"P-princess?" he sputtered, shock momentarily robbing him of any other words.

The mermaid did another circuit around him, weaving seamlessly above and below the surface while he splashed in a clumsy circle, trying to keep her in his sights. She popped up again to regard him. "I've never seen you here before," she announced in the same high-pitched tone. "And you're very strange. Where did you come from?"

"I'm - uh - a traveler," Syaoran stuttered. "I come from - from another country." He wasn't quite sure what to offer as an explanation for this trip - they were writing a book? Seeing the sights? Searching for feathers that belonged to, in effect, her? Fortunately, she seemed to accept his surface explanation with goodwill.

"But what happened to your tail?" the mermaid persisted, reaching out under the water to tweak at his foot. "It's all split down the middle. Was it painful?"

Syaoran yanked his foot back, a mortified blush growing on his face as it began to dawn on him that this version of his Princess Sakura was not, in fact, wearing any clothes. The lower half wasn't a problem, since it melded seamlessly into a smooth tail trailing with streaming fins, but her torso and chest - he jerked his eyes away, addressing the mackerel-speckled clouds as he cleared his throat. "No, uh, I never had a tail," he mumbled. "These are legs."

"Legs? Like a crab?" The girl laughed, splashing her tail through the waves and sending droplets in a spattering arc. "That doesn't make any sense! What are you?"

"I promise you I've always had legs - I'm a human," Syaoran said, somewhat nettled. "My name is Syaoran."

She tilted her head to the side, blue-green eyes reflecting puzzlement. "I don't understand. I'm a human, too."

"No, you're -" Syaoran cut himself off before he could correct her, his eyes creeping downwards and then shooting back to the sky once more. The hot blush was creeping down his neck and up his scalp; for the first time, he was gratified by the coolness of the water in this world.

He tried to force himself to think clearly. This was a translation problem, it seemed. Mokona's translation-spell was still working, but since people of every world simply thought of themselves as people, it was only natural that this mermaid wouldn't understand the distinction. "Well, in the place that I come from, we all have legs like this," he said finally. "My friends - my friends look the same as I do. If you want to come meet them, you'll see."

"Oh! Could I meet them?" She sounded delighted by the prospect, as though he had just offered her a real treat.

 

"Sure," he managed to say. "I'm sure they'd love to meet you too." Her simple, innocent enthusiasm and her squeaky, high-pitched voice were beginning to make him realize - despite his initial panic - that this world's version of Sakura was still only a child. It was hard to tell by the body - the slender, powerful tail was twice the length of the rest of her - but fractured, unavoidable glances at her chest only confirmed the impression; she had a child's body, flat as a board. It didn't make him feel any less uncomfortable at the lack of clothes, but this was obviously normal for her people; at least he didn't feel like his face was going to explode every time their gazes crossed.

"Yay!" In a sudden flurry of excited energy, she dove beneath the surface, powerful sweeps of her tail driving her forward almost blindingly fast. Before Syaoran could react, she suddenly reversed direction, turning on her tail, and came flying back towards him. She broached the surface, arms extended as though she were flying, and seemed to suspended hang in a glittering arc of droplets for a moment before she completed her dive and sliced back into the water. "Let's go! Where are they?"

"U-um - they're back this way, towards the sun," he said, pointing. "But I can't go with them just yet, I need to find -" A sudden thought made him stop. Mokona had sensed vibrations in this direction, and he'd come this way and found a version of Sakura. Didn't it make sense that the waves of the feather and of the feather's owner would be similar? In that case, the feather was probably off in the other direction after all. "Never mind," he mumbled in defeat, dropping his arm. "Okay, let's go."

The swim back along the path he'd come seemed twice as long as the initial journey; partly out of fatigue, made worse by the sun dazzling directly in his eyes, and partly by the presence of his new companion. The mermaid flitted through the water as quickly as a minnow in a stream, attaining effortless speeds and then reversing direction in an instant. Syaoran had always considered himself a strong swimmer, but he felt slow and clumsy and weak when compared to her.

"Princess - wait," he called out as she threatened to vanish out of sight again. He kicked himself for his slip, but he still didn't know her name; at least he hadn't called her 'Princess Sakura.' The last thing he wanted to do was to start confusing them in his mind.

The mermaid swam back to him, her turquoise eyes glowing with concern. "Is something wrong?" she chirped.

"No - yes - I just need a little break," he said. He was panting with the prolonged exertion of swimming, and he was beginning to seriously worry how much longer his endurance could hold out. "I'm sorry. I'm not really meant for swimming all the time. Do you know of somewhere I could get on dry land and rest?"

"Land?" She swirled up beside him, her expression serious and thoughtful. "Dry? I don't understand. What do you mean?"

He groaned; another translation difficulty, and this was going to be a major obstacle. "You know - ground?" he tried a little desperately. "Like the earth - the solid rock that doesn't move?"

"Oh yes, of course!" she said. "But the ground is down there." She pointed off into the emerald darkness. "Do you want to go there?"

"No, definitely not!" he said emphatically, shaking his head. He tried to think of a way to explain it. What would land look like to a creature that lived in the sea? "Look, do you have - mountains? Places where the ground rises up higher than anything else?"

The mermaid nodded. "We have those," she says. "Not right here, though."

"Right, but do you know of any places where the mountains are so high, they break above the surface of the water?" he tried to explain.

Her eyes widened. "You mean, you want ground that floats in the sky?" she exclaimed. "I don't think we have anything like that!"

"No - I mean -" Syaoran struggled to find a way to express the concept, frustrated with the language barrier. He'd always taken Mokona's translation skills for granted; but then, they'd never encountered a people so different from themselves that the concepts simply didn't exist in their vocabulary. "Just a mountain that's really high, as high as we are right now," he explained.

She frowned, her tail swirling up currents of the water as she circled in place. "I don't think so, Syaoran," she said at length. "I don't know everything, but this is my home, and I've never seen anything like what you've described. I've never heard anyone in my family describe anything like that, either, and they've traveled in every direction for many days. I'm sorry."

He groaned. He still wasn't sure he was explaining himself properly, but if she was right, then this whole world might be an ocean, without any landmasses at all. No wonder Mokona hadn't been able to find any solid ground to put them on. Even if there was dry land somewhere in this world, it was so far away that they'd never be able to reach it. "We'd better find the feather fast," he muttered under his breath.

"Sorry?" the girl perked up.

"I said we'd better find my friends fast," he said aloud. "Just give me a moment to catch my breath, and we can start off."

"Would you like me to pull you?" the mermaid offered.

"Er -" Syaoran broke off, flustered. For all the sinuous length of her tail, her childlike frame was small and delicate. "Can you? You're awfully - er -"

"I'm stronger than I look!" she said proudly. "And I swim very fast. I give my little cousins pull-rides all the time. It'll be fine!"

"Well, okay," he muttered, flushing with embarrassment at having to ask for help. But it was true, she could swim much faster than he could; even if she could only pull him along at half-speed, it would still be faster than he could swim on his own.

"Let's go!" Without waiting for any further response, the mermaid seized his outstretched hands and began pushing off with powerful strokes of her tail. Syaoran flailed and sputtered a bit, trying to balance against her unexpectedly forceful pull, before he found a way to relax and let her tow him along.

Unfortunately, while the mermaid had stayed at the surface of the water to talk with him, she seemed to have no such compunction about diving beneath the waves while pulling him along. Syaoran tried to gasp for air the few times he could break above the surface; but as she got into a long, striding speed, the mermaid began to dive further and further below the surface.

At last, Syaoran could hold his straining breath no longer; he had to fight to pull his hand out of hers, and flailed and struggled against the water as he clawed his way to the surface. His lungs were burning, and his eyes watered as he gasped for breath and coughed. A moment later, the mermaid surfaced behind him, her familiar face worried and concerned.

"Syaoran, what's wrong?" she said timorously. "I'm sorry, did I go too fast? Are you motion-sick?"

"No -" he coughed again, and had to take a few deep breaths before he could continue. "It's not - it's not your fault, princess. I need air to breathe, I can't go too deep under the water."

She flipped the surface of the water, huffing out an exasperated breath. "I don't understand," she said.

Syaoran felt suddenly tired, too tired to fight against the cultural barrier. "I don't know how to explain it to you," he said in frustration. "But it's a big problem - me and my friends, we're all in trouble here. We need a place above the water where we can rest, or we can't keep ourselves up. If we get too tired to swim and slip beneath the water, we'll drown."

"I don't understand 'drown,' " the mermaid said. "If you're tired, can't you come to my house and rest? I'm sure my family won't mind. You don't have to stay up here all night."

"No, you don't understand!" Syaoran said, desperation driving anger. "I'm different from you! You can breathe water, but I can't! I need air, or I'll die!"

She blinked at him, and Syaoran felt immediately sorry for yelling at her. This was her world, after all, and he was an intruder here. "Princess - "

"But we're not that different," she interrupted. "We're both human, you and I. I can breathe above the sky and below it. Why can't you?"

"I don't know, I just can't!" he said in frustration.

"Have you tried?"

"What?" He stared at her momentarily shocked speechless. "I - I don't think you understand," he said helplessly. "It's not something I can try. If I breathe water, I'll die."

"I think maybe it's you who doesn't understand," the mermaid said with unexpected firmness. She reached out and took his hands in both her own; the grip of those delicate fingers was astonishingly strong. "Come with me," she said.

"Wait - no!" he said, trying unsuccessfully to free himself from her grip. "Please, don't -"

She met his eyes, her own glowing a vivid blue-green. "Trust me," she said.

He was robbed, momentarily, of speech; in the next moment, she gave a powerful flip of her tail, and pulled them both beneath the surface.

It seemed warmer here beneath the waves, without the cooling breeze above the ocean to steal the heat. More beautiful, too, with the silvery sun fracturing into long, pale bars of sunlight that filtered through blue-green water the color of the mermaid's eyes. He wasn't sinking, but flying. The water's surface was a silvery sky overhead; below them, the waving fronds of seaweed rushed up towards them like treetops tossing in the wind. It was a whole new world, a beautiful world, one he'd never dreamed of before.

Silver bubbles streamed up in front of his eyes as his breath leaked out of him. His lungs were pulsing, red-hot in his chest. This far deep there was no point in struggling; he could only hope that she would be able to get him back to the surface in time before he drowned.

He let out the last of his air, opened his mouth, and breathed.

Water rushed in, and for a moment he panicked under the choking weight. But only for a moment; the cool water seemed to soothe the burning pain of his lungs, and then he found himself breathing in and out, as easily as he could have above the surface. He wasn't - drowning. He was breathing.

His eyes flared open in astonishment, and he met Sakura's smiling face. "See," she said, and her voice as the water carried it to his ears was lower, sweeter, more melodic. "I told you so."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The water world is modeled on the world of Chelestra, the third world in the Death Gate Cycle. In that world, the entire world was a globe of water (no rock core at all, unlike this world) with floating seasuns and seamoons to provide light and heat and a solid place for people to live. A pocket of air surrounded the seamoons, but the water itself of that world was also breathable. The protagonist of that series, when he got dumped into that world, experienced a moment of OMGWTFBBQ similar to Syaoran's. XD


	3. Water World II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The travelers visit the Emerald City, and go off to see a wizard. Wait, wrong story.

Mokona was worried, although she didn't want to admit it. There was definitely a feather in this world, she could feel its staticky vibrations pulsing from far beneath the waves. And that was good. But they were in the middle of the water with no place to go, which _wasn't_ good. Normally it wasn't so hard to find a safe place to land in a new world, although finding a good balance between a safe spot and proximity to the feather was a tricky business, not that mean old Kuro-growly ever appreciated it. _Hmph._

Syaoran had been gone a long time now, and the sun was starting to sink down in the sky. Kurogane's arms and legs moved in tired circles in the water, sinking incrementally down and then kicking harder in spontaneous bursts of energy to push himself up.

Mokona would have liked to help. Normally, Mokona would have just whipped out _Secret Technique #54: Super Flotation Power!_ and that would have taken care of things. Even if that hadn't been possible, she would have at least liked to offer to take Kurogane's sword and armor and carry them, like she usually did for Souhi and Hien in worlds where they couldn't carry them around.

But ever since they had first splashed into the water of this world, Mokona hadn't been able to do any magic at all, apart from being able to sense where the feathers were. Mokona hadn't asked, but she was pretty sure that Fai had noticed it, too. There was something funny about the water; Yuuko sometimes talked about the effects of freshwater and saltwater on different kinds of magic, but it shouldn't be doing _this._ It was especially worrisome because Mokona wasn't even sure she could get the magic circle to come out so that they could go home. Mokona wasn't even sure how to tell the others, or if they'd even want to know?

"Ne, Kuro-puu," Fai said softly. Even though he was human, he floated on the surface of the water almost as well as Mokona did, almost like the water-bugs in Yuuko's pond. Fai was stretched out full-length over the surface of the water, his coat floating on either side of him, his hands extended. He was holding onto Kurogane's hands, helping the bigger man stay afloat. "Come on, you're getting tired. You should just get rid of that extra weight already. It'll help. We can worry about getting it back later, you know."

"It would only be delaying the inevitable, and you know it," Kurogane responded grumpily, kicking a little harder. "When the kid gets back, he'll probably have exhausted himself too, and then what? If we don't get out of this water soon we'll all be in trouble soon, unless you do something to help. Or do you like the thought of being the last one left standing up here? Floating," he added after a moment.

Fai drew in a soft, audible breath, and let it out on a puffed half-laugh. "I don't know what you're expecting of me, Kuro-puu," he said. "What makes you think I can do anything to help at all?"

"I'm not a fool," Kurogane growled. "I grew up around priestesses, I know what powerful magic feels like. I can feel how much _you've_ got, for all you try to hide it with your silly attitude. I know enough to know what you _could_ do, but you won't."

"You shouldn't put any kind of faith in my magic," Fai said softly. "Nothing good has ever come of it."

Mokona had stayed quiet throughout the entire conversation, when suddenly a shift in the feel of the vibrations caused her ears to perk up. "Mekyo!" she cried, eyes popping open as she bounced up on Fai's back. "Something's coming!"

"What's coming?" Kurogane demanded, his movements becoming more vigorous as he tried to look around.

"The vibrations are coming closer," Mokona exclaimed. She pointed. "It's the same ones that Syaoran went after!"

"Does that mean he got the feather and is coming back?" Fai asked in surprise. "Goodness, that's much faster than usual. We didn't even have to do anything!"

"Not like you _ever_ do anything," Kurogane grumbled. "But seriously, we can't get out of here fast enough."

"There's just one thing I don't understand," Fai said to Mokona. "If he found the feather and is coming back, then what was causing the vibrations you feel in the other direction?"

"Does it matter?" Kurogane shrugged. "If we have it, then we can leave, right?"

"Well…" Mokona hedged, not sure if this was a good time to bring up the problem with the magic. "Mokona isn't sure…"

The cool breeze brought the sound of shouting to their ears, and they all perked up as they turned in that direction. They saw a spiky-haired head bobbing up over the waves, and one arm waving frantically. The head went back under the water, and bobbed up again a minute later, close enough that they could recognize Syaoran's features and hear his voice. "Kurogane-san! Fai-san!" he shouted. "It's all right! It's really okay!"

"You found it?" Kurogane bellowed, and with great effort he began to push himself through the water in Syaoran's direction.

"No wait - stay there!" Syaoran yelled and disappeared beneath the waves again. He didn't come up for air again, and the two men were left to look at each other in confusion and shrug their shoulders.

"This is strange," Mokona said, hopping back onto Fai's head and cocking her ears. "The vibrations are very close, but Mokona doesn't sense a feather…"

Syaoran splashed out of the water beside them a moment later, shaking his head and sending droplets flying everywhere. "Listen, it's wonderful!" he was saying excitedly. "We don't have to worry anymore!"

"You got it?" Kurogane demanded. "We can go now?"

"Yes! Wait, got what?" Syaoran shook his head. "I mean, yes, we can go, she says we can stay at her house while we rest -"

"She?" Fai's interest perked up. "You found people?"

"You found dry land?" Kurogane was more interested in practicalities.

"Yes, I mean, no, I didn't," Syaoran was getting flustered. "Yes, I found people - or at least I found _a_ person - but there's no land - it's all underwater! This whole world is underwater! And the people -"

"But what good does that do us!" Kurogane shouted. "We can't damn well breathe underwater!"

"But that's what I'm trying to tell you! We _can,"_ Syaoran insisted. "She showed me! Look, I'll show you!"

He vanished under the waves. Fai, looking surprised, released his hold on Kurogane's hand, and in a moment he too had disappeared underwater. Mokona yelped in surprise and leapt away from Fai as he went under, landing on Kurogane's head and clinging to his spiky hair. Kurogane made a grab for Fai's trailing bright hair as it sank rapidly out of sight, but his fingers barely brushed the fleeting tendrils before they disappeared into dimness.

"Ooh, Mokona doesn't like this," she moaned, hopping back and forth and staring at the water. Being able to breathe or not wasn't a problem for Mokona, of _course,_ but she wasn't sure what this strange water would do to a creature that was all made of magic. But then again, if Fai had been willing to try it…

"Hey! Mage! Kid, come back!" Kurogane yelled, panic beginning to edge his voice. Mokona could hear the voices of the others, strange and muffled under the weight of the water; Syaoran's eager tones and Fai's even ones, and a high female voice that sounded like... Sakura?

Suddenly, Kurogane jolted, and with a surprised yelp he vanished as some powerful force pulled him under the waves. Inevitably, Mokona was pulled along with him, sucked under the water's surface with a despondent wail.

Nothing bad seemed to happen, though, and after a moment Mokona loosed her hold on Kurogane's hair and looked cautiously around. They were sinking, gently but inexorably, through a world of silver-blue light. Streams of bubbles streamed upwards from all of her human companions, but nobody seemed to have any problems breathing.

Or, in Kurogane's case, yelling. "What the hell!" he shouted, his deep rumbling bass oddly distorted in the water. "Were you trying to kill me?"

"Sorry about that, Kurogane-san!" Syaoran was floating nearby, smiling in an apologetic way. "You didn't seem to want to listen, and, well, I thought this would be the fastest way to show you what I meant -"

"You didn't even TRY to explain!" Kurogane thundered. "What the fu -"

He was interrupted by a high-pitched giggling from behind him; Mokona went BOINK as the source of the familiar vibration registered. "Ah!" she cried out, launching herself through the water towards the finned stranger who had swum up from below. "Look, it's the princess! Except she's all different!" Mokona proclaimed. "This is where the waves were coming from!"

"- er," Kurogane finished, lamely trying to edit his speech for gentle company. "Nice to meet you, I guess," he said weakly. "Where are we?"

"Home, of course!" the mermaid said happily.

* * *

They drifted steadily downwards among the shifting bars of sunlight, letting gravity and the current do most of the work for them. The mermaid couldn't possibly pull all of them, and Kurogane had spent nearly all of his strength trying to keep afloat. His exhaustion was evident; he didn't say much as they traveled, leaving most of the conversation to Fai and Syaoran.

"Princess, this is Fai Fluorite, Kurogane, and Mokona," Syaoran quickly introduced his friends.

She regarded them, humming slightly as she swayed back and forth in the current. "You were wrong, Syaoran," she said abruptly. "They _don't_ look like you. This one is blond, and the other one is all dark. Why did you say that everyone from your world looked like you?"

"I just meant that we all had legs, Princess," Syaoran explained awkwardly.

"But Mokona doesn't!" The mermaid darted quickly to take her from Fai's hands, holding her carefully. "You look more like a little hermit crab!"

"Mokona is Mokona!" the little creature proclaimed. "Mokona isn't like anything else!"

"We're so happy to meet you, and to share your hospitality," Fai said politely. "Syaoran-kun, aren't you going to introduce us to your lovely new companion?" He winked at Syaoran, who couldn't help but blush.

"This is - er -" Syaoran tripped over his tongue. He almost called her "Princess Sakura," but remembered at the last moment that she wasn't the same person. "I'm sorry, Princess," he stammered. "I, ah, I didn't get your name."

Her blue-green eyes widened, and she tilted her head in puzzlement. "You don't know?" she asked, then gave out a laugh like silvery chimes. "You knew I was a princess, but you don't know my name?"

Syaoran shot a guilty look at Fai, who only smiled. "Well, um, you just _looked_ like a princess," he temporized. "You had such an, um, regal bearing -"

Kurogane snorted quietly. Syaoran frowned at him. " -but we're strangers to this country, remember?" he said. "We don't know who everyone is here."

"Oh, of course," she said, accepting this cheerfully. "I'm Princess Tideflower, of course!"

Syaoran blinked. "Tide… flower?" he hazarded.

"Yes! For the tideflower plants," she said enthusiastically. "Haven't you ever seen them before? Let me show you!"

Without warning, she grabbed his hands and pumped her tail powerfully, and they shot away ahead of their other companions. Syaoran was about to protest about leaving them behind, but the speed of their passage knocked a fierce breath of water into his face and his lungs, and he was left speechless.

"Oi! Where are you guys going?" Kurogane yelled after them.

"Let the children play, Kuro-tan," Fai's lazy voice countered. "We'll catch up."

They'd already reached the level of the tall, waving kelp forests; now Tideflower took Syaoran into a forest of gently swaying trunks and rigid, intricate formations of coral. The plants parted to reveal a wide, straight avenue leading across the seafloor, obviously artificially planned and maintained. Schools of dazzlingly colored fish darted like birds among their branches, and the ground below sparkled with a tightly-packed mosaic of bright gravel and shells.

"See, these plants," the mermaid told him in a breathless voice as she surged forward between the rows. "I was named for them. Tideflower plants have these small blossoms; they grow and then drop off with the tide, then grow again. They're said to be beautiful because they give their flowers away, instead of holding on to them until they wither and die."

At first Syaoran didn't see the flowers she meant; but then he realized that what he had taken for a steady flow of silver bubbles was instead a flurry of bright pale beads like flower petals. They did not fly away upwards, as the true bubbles did, but instead fell in a slow and steady stream, or were caught by tiny whirlpools and swirled in tornadoes of silvery white.

The princess laughed in delight, then pulled Syaoran so close to the tideflower plants as to touch them, kicking up another cloud of the shimmering spheres. An expert twist of her tail sent the two of them corkscrewing, and the currents generated by her movements sucked in the hail of tiny flowers until they seemed caught in a soft, gentle blizzard.

"They're beautiful," Syaoran said, unexpectedly stunned.

"I love them," the mermaid said simply, and Syaoran's heart thumped painfully in his chest. "Look, you can see my home up ahead. Come on! Your friends are so slow, can't they hurry up? I want you all to meet my family!"

* * *

The princess' "home" turned out to be a breathtaking underwater palace, not built from wood or carved from stone but instead grown from the living coral that clustered along the ocean floor. How they shaped the material to form the graceful colonnades and wide seaweed-carpeted balconies Syaoran had no idea, but he itched to find out.

It was a relief to get their feet back on hard ground, although the floors had never been built for feet to walk on them. The floors tended to be broken and jagged, and there was no such thing as stairs, but buoyed by the water it was easy enough to scramble around the obstacles and swim from one level to another. Fai was the fastest to adapt to this new mode of getting around, diving and swooping until he almost seemed part merman himself; Kurogane was the slowest, still weighed down by the armor he refused to take off, and grumbled much about it.

Princess Tideflower's people were a congenial, hospitable bunch; most built along the same slim, flowing lines as her, only larger. They regarded Syaoran and his companions as mildly alarming curiosities, but once the initial shock of the meeting wore off, they were willing enough to extend a warm greeting. And like her, none of them wore clothes, which caused Syaoran much blushing and consternation.

The scholar in him couldn't help but notice, however, that although clothing as such was absent, the adults of the mermaid society were very big on decoration. Delicate nets of pearls strung on fine cords, or mother-of-pearl jewelry polished from discarded seashell; he even saw glints of true metal and gems among them, mined from some underwater source. The merfolk's hair seemed to come in all colors, but always matched the color of their scales, and sometimes even bore faint mottling or other brindled patterns. This looked normal enough for the merfolk with tan or gold or red scales, but somewhat unnerving on those with flashing patterns of green and purple, or pale silver and blue.

"We don't get very many visitors these days," a green-haired merman who introduced himself as Tideflower's father explained to them apologetically. "The sea routes are too dangerous right now. Most people prefer not to travel unless they absolutely have to, and even well-guarded trade fleets are being attacked on their route. We offer sincere apologies if our hospitality is lacking because of that."

There was no danger of that; they were given coral-walled chambers to stay in, and dinner. Syaoran had been a little worried at first that they would not be able to eat the same food as the submarine folk, but the food they were given - long, thick rolls of either mild or spicy vegetable and fish paste, wrapped in starchy seaweed - was delicious and filling. Fai, unable to refuse the hospitality of their hosts, had taken a few polite bites, turned green, and eaten nothing for the remainder of the evening.

Syaoran slept better than he had expected; all the unaccustomed strain of swimming had tired him out. The sleeping chambers were warmer than the others, heat radiating up through the innermost wall from some deep vent; and although there were no blankets or mattresses, the buoyancy of the water made cushions unnecessary.

With the morning light, however, Syaoran was anxious to be on their mission. When they ventured out of the palace in Tideflower's happy company, Syaoran began asking questions about their missing treasure.

The biggest problem was describing the concept of a "feather" in the first place; Mokona's spell seemed to automatically translate it as "fin" to these people, which didn't quite get the right connotation across. Abandoning land metaphors, Syaoran fell to simply describing the shape and appearance of the feather.

"It's sort of a triangular shape," Syaoran said, trying to draw an approximation of the lost feather on clear bed of sand. "Bright white in appearance, but it has a black design on it, a little bit like- like the structure of that coral," he said, pointing to a nearby specimen. "It's about this large."

The king looked dubious; Tideflower swam up and darted over his shoulder to get a look at Syaoran's drawing. "We have a lot of things that look a _little_ like that," she said, "but not exactly. And they've all been here for years and years."

"The item might have been here for just a short time, or for a very long time - maybe even centuries," Syaoran tried to explain, hoping they wouldn't ask how this was possible. Fortunately, the merfolk seemed to be as willing as Tideflower had been to simply accept what they were told at face value, and not ask pointed questions. "It's a very powerful magical item, and it can have a strong effect on the people or things who hold it. We can't risk the wrong people getting hold of it."

The king exchanged a glance with one of his companions, who nodded to Syaoran. "We do not have many magical items in this kingdom," he said. "To tell you the truth, we know virtually nothing about it. Magic fell into disuse here a long time ago."

Syaoran's shoulders drooped. Another of the watching merfolk must have seen his expression, because they hastened to add; "If you need to ask about a _magical_ item, then there _is_ someone who can help you," he suggested. "But only if it's very, very important. _She_ doesn't like to be disturbed for trivial matters."

"Oh, it is!" Syaoran said earnestly, then hesitated, feeling a bite of trepidation. "Who is 'she'? Where does she live?"

Several of the merfolk shuddered and looked away, as though the water had suddenly become cold. Only the king was bold enough to answer straightforwardly. "We speak of the Sea-Witch," he said. "She lives in a cave that's not too far, for those foolhardy to seek her out. She is both powerful and wise, and she will sometimes answer the requests of those brave or foolish enough to place them - but she always demands a heavy price for her assistance, and if you cannot meet her price, you will face the wrath of the tides."

* * *

Princess Tideflower had wished to accompany them, and threw a small tantrum when her father sternly told her to remain behind. Her father seemed to feel the need to apologize profusely to the travelers for her behavior, although none of them had felt more than mildly guilty for disappointing her. "My daughter is young and reckless," he explained, "full of too much curiosity and never ceasing to ask questions. For some reason she is never content to stay at home, she always wants to see more. But it's simply too dangerous, I'm sure you understand."

"It's quite all right," Fai assured him. "Your lovely daughter's welcoming friendliness has been a great gift to us."

"Her questions don't bother us at all," Syaoran added. "After all, we _are_ strangers here, it's only natural that she should be curious. I'm just as happy that she'll stay here where it's safe."

Several of the mermen had escorted them to their destination; their pace was much more sedate and stately than Tideflower's bursts of wild enthusiasm, but still much faster than the travelers could have swum on their own. They crested a sandy ridge to reveal a wide cleft in the sea floor below, not part of the coral reef but clustered with kelp and sea-plants nevertheless. A wide, irregular mouth of blackness gaped in the face of the cliff, and their escorts pulled up short.

"Ahead is the lair of Tethys, the Sea-Witch," one of the mermen told them. "Pardon us, but this as far as we will go. It's dangerous to leave the reefs these days, and the Sea-Witch does not like visitors."

"That sounds promising," Kurogane muttered, but he seemed slightly cheered at the thought of entering dangerous territory. The three of them and Mokona set out to swim the distance to the underground cavern; the dark shade of the cliff face soon enveloped them, making the bright colorful waters of the reef seemed like another world.

The cavern was pitch black; although some daylight did still filter down from the sky above, none of it penetrated the walls of the cave. Syaoran put a hand out to the wall to guide him, then drew it back in surprise; the stone was perfectly smooth, almost slick, and much warmer to touch than he'd expected.

"Er... hello?" Syaoran ventured, his voice echoing weirdly in the underwater blackness of the cavern ahead. "Madame Tethys?"

"Ahh..." Movement stirred in the darkness, and a voice spoke in what was almost a whisper. "We have guests. Maru, Moro, make light. No doubt you will wish to see."

It was a soft, sibillant voice that seemed to carry with it the rushing, inexorable force of the tides. Syaoran felt his older companions start as they, too, recognized the voice. "Oh no," he heard Kurogane mutter. "Not _her_..."

Two bright squiggles of light appeared on each side of the cave; they streaked away to the sides, and a series of glowing yellow patches began to appear in niches in the walls and ceiling. The ethereal beings flittered by the travelers on their way to light the walls; they glowed from within with their own eerie light, and they had small human faces; they almost looked like mermaids, if not for their size and semi-transparency. The new light illuminated, but did not reveal, the inside of the cave. Unlike the coral dwellings of the merfolk, this appeared to be a real, natural stone cave, hollowed out of the rock promontory to the size of a large house. The floor and walls were worn smooth, and had an odd laminate feel under the traveler's feet as they stepped cautiously forward.

Ahead of them, a patch of darkness moved, fragments of darkness uncurling from the mottled stone wall and coming down to rest upon the floor. The light spilled on the figure as it turned, throwing a start contrast of black and white upon the sharp, elegant features of the Time-Space witch.

Long locks of black hair floated about her head like the strands of a spider's web; the skin of her face, neck and shoulders were pure white, almost opalescent. From below her shoulders to her hands, the white skin turned to a seamless pure black, like a lady's evening gloves; the same black color poured down her torso and legs to flare out like the wide skirt of a gown where her feet would be. From there the silky blackness split into wide tendrils of darkness that flowed across the floor, moving and undulating gently as she moved. Her eyes, like her skin, were pale and completely colorless, and they did not shift their focus when she blinked her heavy lids over them.

"Your eyes -" Syaoran choked out, too startled to hold his tongue. Suddenly the darkness of the cave made perfect sense. "You're _blind_?"'

The figure smiled faintly as she glided across the room towards them; the movement of her long dark tendrils over the floor was unsettling, to say the least. "Say rather, that I do not see with my eyes," she said, her voice smooth and lazy. "There are so many other things in the world to see. But now, let me look at you, and see who has come to beg the favor of the Sea Witch."

The black tendrils uncurled towards them with a languorous motion, and Syaoran shuddered and braced himself for the slimy touch on his skin. To his surprise, the touch of those arms over his clothes was as delicate as a light brush of fingers. The skin itself, as the tip of the tendril trailed lightly over his face, was warm and clean, and as velvety soft as a fine glove. The woman's smile widened slightly, as though she had been able to hear his thoughts.

"Landwalkers?" she observed as she pulled back her arms. "I have not seen landwalkers in my domain in many, many years. What brings you here?"

"We are travelers, not natives to this land," Fai said; of the three of them he seemed least perturbed by the witch's strange form, or perhaps he just hid it the best. "We're seeking a certain object. When we find it, we'll be on our way again."

"Of course." The witch turned away, her arms making overlapping waves over the floor as she glided to a corner. "And not being native to this world, or knowing where to look for this certain object, you turn to me."

"The people of this world did say you were very wise, great lady," Fai said cheerfully.

"And did they warn you that the gift of wisdom comes with a price?" she asked, as she lifted a small, glowing orange lump of some unidentifiable material into a metal enclosure like a lamp. "As all gifts do."

"Of course it does," Kurogane muttered resentfully.

"As long as you understand that, then we can come to a satisfactory arrangement." She turned back away from the strange lamp, her hair and her multiple black arms swaying in graceful counterpoint to her movement. "What is it that you seek?"

"A feather," Syaoran blurted out, then berated himself. "It's, um, a small item with delicate ribbing, sort of like a fin. It has a triangle shape and it's white with a black design -"

"I know what a feather is," the sea witch interrupted, her voice gently amused. "Why should you seek such an object here? This is a world without much use for feathers."

"It comes from outside this world, and we seek it to return it to its rightful owner," Fai explained. "It is an item of great power, and we'd hate to see it fall into the wrong hands. It could do terrible things, in possession of an evil mind."

"Mm." The witch fell briefly silent, her white eyes hooded as she swayed slightly. After a moment she lifted her face back towards them, although her eyes did not focus on any of their faces. "I know where to find what you seek," she said. "And what price will you give in return for this information?" she asked.

"We'll try to pay what you ask," Syaoran said bravely. "Although we don't have much to pay with."

"For every boon, there is a bane. For every gift, there is a price. The balance must be kept. This is no whim of mine; it is the will of the tides." Her voice had a rhythmic, almost hypnotic quality. Syaoran was beginning to feel a little funny, almost light-headed. There was an odd tickle at the back of his throat, partly a taste and partly a smell, like burning wood or hair or spices. He fidgeted uncomfortably, and had to fight the urge to cough.

"The price given for magic can be many things," the witch went on. She was moving across the floor towards them, so slowly as to be almost imperceptible save for the drifting motion of her hair and splayed arms. "If you have nothing to give, then the price can come from your own body, which is always yours to pay. An eye - an arm - a treasured memory…"

"It's not worth that much," Kurogane grumbled. "I think we'd do better just leaving and searching on our own."

She turned towards him, black mantle flaring around her, and suddenly without seeming to move she was in arms' reach of the warrior. "Of course, the sacrifice need not be so dire as all that," she purred. Several slender tendrils slid up the warrior's arms, curling delicately about his wrist and winding up his elbows, and she raised her black-clad hand to cup his cheek. "Traditionally, a night of pleasure is considered a worthy payment to a lady of great wisdom. Assuming, of course, that the performance is satisfactory…"

Kurogane choked, turning a deep red color as he tried to yank his hands back, but the witch's arms were surprisingly strong. Syaoran just goggled, unable to think of any suitable response to this even if the smoke _hadn't_ been muddling his thoughts. He was willing to do a lot for the sake of Sakura's feathers, _but…_

"I, uh," Fai said, when it was obvious that his two companions were speechless. "I do beg your pardon, lady, but somehow I don't think _any_ of us would be able to satisfy you in that regard. No offense intended. I just don't think we'd have, um, compatible equipment."

The witch gave a throaty laugh, and with a sudden rush of water she was abruptly on the other side of the room again, despite never seeming to move. "Oh, don't sell yourselves short," she purred. "I have, as I said, had encounters with landwalkers in ages past, before the oceans rose to cover all the lands of this world. But if you decline the offer, then I think sadly such an affair is not to be." She smirked.

"We're leaving," Kurogane sputtered as he regained control of his voice and limbs. "Right now. We'll just find the damn thing ourselves."

"But, Kurogane-san," Syaoran objected, fighting through the muzzy panic. "That could take weeks, or maybe months! The feather -"

"Isn't worth whatever stupid price she's going to demand!" Kurogane said sharply. "Let's go."

"Your pants," the witch called out as he began to turn and storm angrily out of the cave.

He halted, and looked for her in bafflement. "What?" he said.

"Your pants. Take them off," the sea witch ordered him, her smirk growing.

"I already told you I'm not going to -" Kurogane began to sputter.

"Exotic clothing from faraway places has great value, does it not?" she said, sending a sly and knowing look in Syaoran's direction. "You can rest assured that the trappings of land-walking beings are quite rare in this dimension. One pair of pants will suffice, as well as your boots, of course."

"But - " Kurogane started.

"That seems like a good bargain to me," Fai nodded wisely. "Especially compared to an eye or a hand. Why not, Kuro-rin?"

"Please, Kurogane-san," Syaoran appealed, looking up at him hopefully. "We have to find the feather as soon as possible. I don't want to leave Princess Sakura alone for so long!"

Kurogane gave Syaoran a long look, opening his mouth as though to argue, but instead he just closed it with a snap and rolled his eyes to the ceiling. "Why me?" Kurogane demanded, but the witch only laughed.

Grumbling, Kurogane shucked off his boots, then began to work his trousers down his long legs. "Oh, you can keep the socks on, though," the witch called thoughtfully.

Kurogane unrolled the fabric of the pants legs from underneath his armor, leaving the overlapping metal plates to trail down over the front of his thighs like a loincloth. "There, are you happy now?" he snarled, flinging the offending articles of clothing at her. "This is gonna chafe like a bitch."

"Oh, good show, Kuro-pyon!" Fai hooted softly, clapping in mock appreciation. "Don't worry, I'm sure such a manly man can take a little discomfort!"

Kurogane rounded on him with a furious swing, but the laughing Fai had no trouble dodging him. "Will that do?" Syaoran asked anxiously, ignoring the byplay.

"Yes, quite satisfactory," Tethys laughed as she collected the discarded pieces of clothing. Then her expression turned serious. "Now. Your answer," she said.

"The vibrations that you hear do indeed sound from the Abyssal Chasm to the north. There are creatures who were sealed down there many, many years ago; serpents that are magical in nature and vicious in temperament. The deep waters should have kept them bound and asleep, and indeed for untold centuries they remained so.

"A few months ago, however, I felt their power awaken once more. They have gained possession of an artifact of great power, one that is able to negate the cold of the deep water and stir them to wakefulness. I believe that is what befell the treasure you seek. Ever since then they have been striking out, killing animals, and fouling clean waters until most of the folk here do not dare to leave their home reefs.

"You must go to the abyssal cavern, following the cold current that spirals along the rim of the ancient caldera," the witch told them, not the slightest hint of humor now in her tone. "If you recover the artifact, then the serpents will be bound in sleep once more. I hope that you are able to do this, travelers, and swiftly; for if they are not stopped, then the serpents will swarm over the lighter, warmer reaches of this world and destroy them all."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In addition to the breathable air of the world of Chelestra - which also has the magic-blocking properties Mokona describes here - I also modeled this world partly on the underwater zone of Vashj'ir. Fellow WoW players may recognize the descriptions of the mermaid city, as well as some of the geography. *grin*


	4. Water World III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The travelers face the evil at the heart of the vortex, and what kind of a lame power is Heart, anyway?

It was a long trek out to the canyon where the Sea Witch promised them they'd find the feather. The walk itself wasn't terribly difficult - it was a downhill grade most of the way, and while the sea floor was rough, the water made them buoyant enough to clamber easily over most of the obstacles. But as they left the bright, warm, living waters of the reef behind the going got harder; slowly, as the weight of water piled up above them, the daylight darkened as though ominous thunderclouds had rolled over the sun. It grew colder the further down they went, and the water seemed to resist their movements until even breathing became an effort.

The growing chill was not just an effect of the weakening sunlight, either. When the witch had told them about the cold current of water running endlessly down into the chasm, she wasn't kidding; it was like an invisible road of pure ice, enough to steal Syaoran's breath away if he stood in it for more than a few seconds. Traveling directly in it was impossible; they were forced to slog along a few yards to the side, staying on the same course as the cold current by feel.

The journey went on for hours, and was mostly quiet; for a change, neither Fai nor even Mokona had much to say. The only sound was a dull, ceaseless roar of the ocean around them, carrying noises from enormous distances away too muffled to make any sense out of, and Kurogane's occasional muttered curses as schools of bright silver fish flitted about his bare legs and poked inquisitive noses up under his loincloth.

At last they came to the caldera the witch had described to them, a wide crater in the ocean floor from some ancient, extinguished volcano. The cold current rushed ahead of them like a river, now, joined by a dozen others to create a whirlpool that emanated a deadly chill.

"Down... down there?" Syaoran called. His teeth chattered with cold. The currents buffeted them like hurricane winds, and he had to grab firmly hold of a rock projection to keep from being swept forward into the swirling vortex. The ground sloped steeply away beneath them, into a wide funnel set in the sea floor that seemed to be sucking water away like an immense drain. The seawater darkened to opacity as it swirled wildly in the vast basin, and the cold blasted them even from here. "I don't think we can get down there - I don't think we can even...  _survive_  down there." Even perched on the lip of the caldera as they were, it was hard to breathe.

"No need for that," Kurogane grunted as he planted his feet on the rocky floor, putting his hand to his sword hilt and tilting his head back. "They're coming to us."

And they were coming; at first Syaoran hadn't been able to make them out, ribbons of blackness against the murky darkness. But they came, streaming out of the churning vortex like comets trailing darkness.

They were serpents, or something like it; as they got closer Syaoran could make out undulating, smooth bodies with hides that reflected the light like an oil slick. Their mouths were full of needle-sharp teeth and their eyes glowed a smoky red, smoldering coals of rage and hate that strained against the water.

The serpents split into multiple weaving trails as they approached, and Fai, Syaoran and Kurogane automatically fell in back-to-back, the two swordsmen holding their weapons in a defensive posture, Fai shielding Mokona between them.

"You came!" one of them squealed, and the others took up the voice in a cackling echo. -came to us came to us came to us-

"They can talk?" Kurogane muttered, shifting his stance and tensing his muscles. "How intelligent are these things?"

If they could talk, maybe they could listen. "Please!" he called out, turning his head in slight jerks as he tried to keep an eye on the spinning, writhing flecks of darkness. "We came to find the feather! Do you have it? If so, then please give it to us!"

"How wonderful!" cried the biggest serpent, the one that seemed to be the leader. "Now we don't have to go out to hunt for food after all!" -hunt for food hunt for food after all.-

Fai sighed. "It can never be that easy," he mourned.

With a howl, the serpents surged forward. Syaoran swung up Hien to block the first attack, and barely managed to yank his leg back before a needle-sharp set of teeth snapped on it. Behind him, he heard Kurogane let out a roar as he charged the thickest group of the serpents.

From there, it all devolved into a confusing melee. The dark snakes swarmed about helter-skelter, attacking from every direction. They were fast, but not very strong, and unarmored. However, Syaoran soon found himself facing another handicap; the heavy pressure of the water slowed him, dragging at his limbs and dulling the cut of his sword.

Every movement became a huge effort, and each swing or dodge was slowed by an extra few seconds. Panic and frustration began to build up in Syaoran's throat; all his training was useless when he just couldn't make his limbs respond as fast as his mind demanded. He managed to avoid any crippling bites, but he was soon bleeding from a dozen jagged toothmarks. Despite the intense chill surrounding them, he felt like he was burning up, and his lungs heaved like he'd already been fighting for an hour. From the sound of the curses coming from the other side of the ridge, Kurogane was running into almost as much difficulty, and Fai didn't even have a weapon. All he could do was dodge and weave, and he couldn't evade the sinuous creatures forever.

Desperately he gave up on Hien and tried to revert to his old style, with brutal overhand kicks; but without the swift cutting edge of the sword to pierce the water, he was dragged down even further. One bold serpent, its skin pulsing with smoky colors, latched onto his left arm. Sharp agony flared up Syaoran's shoulder and down to his finger's, and he yelled out. Instinctively he brought Hien slashing around, and a cloud of dark fluid erupted into the water as he severed the serpent's head from the rest of its body.

His shout of triumph died on his lips, however, as the serpent's thrashing body refused to slow. Instead the cloud of blood writhed, seeming almost alive, before suddenly drawing into a long dark ribbon trailing from the severed head of the eel. Within moments, what had been one dead serpent was two live ones, both circling him and letting out taunting jeers.

"They're regenerating!" he exclaimed in dismay.

"These aren't ordinary monsters," Fai called out. Syaoran saw him out of the corner of his eye, but the serpents seemed to be driving him further away from the others.

"I can see that!" Kurogane snarled. "Damn, these are as bad as those demons in Outo!"

"If they aren't monsters, what are they?" Syaoran called back, slashing at one of the snakes to drive it back.

"They're  _emanations_ ," Fai said, and the word blurred a bit in Syaoran's ears, even over the chaos of the fight, so that he wasn't sure what word the older man used. Fai raised his voice, addressing the serpents directly. "Who created you?"

" _You_  did."

-youdidyoudidyoudid-

Syaoran saw Fai stiffen, his evasive moments stilling as a strange blank expression crept over his face. The serpents swarmed, converging on their suddenly unmoving target. "Fai-san!" Syaoran cried out in warning.

Kurogane roared, and his sword swept around letting a furious blast of force rush outwards from the blade. The serpents shredded away before it, and Kurogane followed in the wake of destruction, charging over to Fai's side. He grabbed the wizard's arm and yanked him out of the path of the snapping, needle-sharp teeth, and turned a burning glare on the serpents. "You're lying!" he shouted. "None of us have ever been to this world before! What the hell do you mean?"

The serpents laughed, a nasty sniggering that seemed to pass from head to tail out along their sinuous bodies. "We are created out of Mankind's evil - hate, avarice, anger, and fear," they said, in a many-echoing voice. -hate fear anger greed hate anger fear - "So long as any darkness remains in men's hearts, we are indestructible - we will live on forever!" -forever and ever and ever.-

"So that's it," Fai said, his voice surprisingly calm over the tumult. "I pity whatever poor fool of a wizard first let you out. This ocean, it was made to contain  _you,_  wasn't it?"

The serpents hissed in fury, black tails lashing. "Stupid, foolish humans - to think they would go so far to undo their mistakes, that they would drown all the world under this vile water!" -drown the world drown the world-

"What are they talking about, mage?" Kurogane demanded. "If these are magical things, isn't there anything you can do to get rid of them?"

"I already told you I can't do anything, Kuro-pon," Fai said, with an edge to his voice. "As soon as I touched the water of this world, all my magic was blocked."

"What?" Kurogane demanded incredulously.

"It's true!" Mokona piped up, from her perch clinging to Fai's shoulder. "This water negates magic! Mokona can't do anything, either!"

"Why the hell didn't you tell me about this  _sooner?_ " Kurogane roared furiously, making a grab for Fai.

Fai ignored him, slipping deftly just out of reach. "Because you're beings of pure magic, this water would render you helpless, wouldn't it?" he asked. "So for all this time you've been sleeping down here, harmlessly sealed away. What changed? How can you come out of your prison now?"

"Yes, ever since that time we have been trapped here, in these cold, lightless depths," the serpents hissed, furious resentment filling their voice. "But not any more! Once the bright thing came, it woke us from our long slumber and freed us! Nothing can stop us from making this entire world ours!"

"So you do have the feather?" Syaoran cried, his attention latching on to the object of their inquiry. "Give it back! Princess Sakura would never let filthy things like you use it for evil!"

He drove his sword forward with a new energy, but the serpents slithered away before him, their mocking laughter ringing in his ears. Through the temporary gap in their ranks Syaoran saw into the heart of the dark maelstrom made from the semi-substantial bodies of the serpents. There, glowing like a lonely star, was the pale form of the feather.

"The feather!" Syaoran gasped, and instinctively he tried to run forward, stretching his hand out for it.

Without meaning to, he dropped his guard, and the circling serpents took immediate advantage of his lapse. They swarmed him, their dark bodies buffeting him bruisingly about. Semi-transparent, sticky trails of smoke wrapped around his wrists and legs, wrapped him; the dark half-real bodies seemed to gain substance as they clung to his skin. "Yes, struggle, boy, struggle," the serpent laughed gloatingly. -hate anger avarice fear.- "The stronger your wicked emotions burn, the stronger we become. You cannot defeat us, for we are born of your heart!"

Leaden exhaustion dragged down Syaoran's limbs, and with it something else; despair. How could he fight against something that drew its very strength from him? As he grew weaker, more furious and frustrated and afraid, they only grew stronger. From the other side of the writhing mass of serpent bodies, he could hear the shouts and cries of Kurogane and Fai, locked in their own losing battle.

But he couldn't give up. He had to get to the feather. Grimly, he began to marshal his strength for one last, desperate burst of resistance.

"Leave him alone!"

The shrill voice called from nowhere, and a bright energetic figure blundered into the mass of serpentine bodies, scattering them. Syaoran looked up, startled, and for a moment he saw Sakura's face and figure above him, silhouetted as though she stood in front of the sun. The shadowlike serpents fled from her, hissing and scuttling off to the side; one that clung tenaciously to Syaoran's side, fangs dug stubbornly into his tunic, was punished with a sound _whap_  of her powerful copper tail.

"Princess - " Syaoran choked off his glad cry of welcome, tempered by anxiety at her entering the dangerous melee. "- Tideflower!" he choked out weakly, flailing to right himself and regain his balance and guard. "What are you doing here? It's dangerous!"

"If it's not too dangerous for Syaoran, it's not too dangerous for me!" she shot back, her blue-green eyes flashing and chin jutting in a terribly familiar stubborn expression. "You and your friends don't know anything about this ocean! I had to come and make sure you were all right!"

"But the serpents -" Syaoran stared around him. The serpents' retreat had been temporary; they circled now at a distance just out of arms' length, hissing and glaring murder at the young pair. But although their teeth snapped at Syaoran, they seemed to want to avoid Sakura; when they came close to her, their dark bodies turned paler, almost translucent.

"They're the ones that have been bothering my father and the other traders, aren't they, I know!" Tideflower pirouetted in the water and surged upwards, her copper hair flying about her face, and glared accusingly at the horde of evil animals. "You! You've been hurting a lot of people, and scaring everyone, and making a terrible mess of the water around the reefs!" she called out to them. "You don't belong here and we don't want you! Why don't you just go back to sleep where you came from?"

"Princess!" Syaoran grabbed her shoulder urgently, pointing with his free hand towards the center of the maelstrom, where the feather still glimmered like a fading star. "There it is! That's what woke them up and lets them keep moving. We have to get that feather away from them!"

"What?" Her aggressive posture faded somewhat as she turned towards the new objective, her expression becoming interested and then absorbed. "Oh, it's so pretty!" With a powerful swish of her tail, she pushed off and glided towards the pinprick of light.

"Princess, don't -" Syaoran tried to scramble after her. Once outside of the mermaid's aura, however, the serpents returned as solid as ever; they rushed forward and snapped at his face, trapping his struggling limbs and holding him back. "Wait! Don't touch that feather!"

He was seized with a sudden terror inspired by Tideflower's abrupt appearance. This young girl was Sakura's equivalent in this world; Mokona had even said that their vibrations felt the same. If Tideflower touched the feather, it might be absorbed into  _her_  body instead; and then how would he ever be able to restore Sakura's memory to her?

The serpents screamed in terror and furor and charged at her, rampaging through the water in a tidal wave of evil black fury. As they reached her, however, they either were forced to veer off in another direction, or became completely insubstantial as they reached her, passing right through her limbs and body like a ghost. Without seeming to notice them, her expression rapt, the mermaid reached forward and plucked the feather from its perch.

A collective, soundless scream rent through the dark, chill waters of the undersea caldera; it throbbed in Syaoran's ears like a file being drawn across his brain. All at once, starting from the bottom but advancing in a swift collapse, the serpents dissolved into piles of dark sand, sinking impotently back to the sea floor.

Tideflower turned to face them, the glow of the feather between her hands illuminating her look of surprised excitement. "I found it, Syaoran!" she called out happily. "I found what you were looking for! It's a triangle, white, with black markings, with ribbed edges! This is it, right?"

Syaoran lowered his sword and looked cautiously around, still not quite able to believe that his opponents had vanished so suddenly. Kurogane and Fai were standing back-to-back a dozen yards away. It was hard to tell in the murky darkness of the water, but he thought he saw blood issuing from their wounds into the water; even so, they were both still standing.

Mokona poked her head out from her hiding place under Fai's shirt collar, and her eyes BOINKED open in an all-too welcome sight as she laid eyes on the feather. "Mekyo!" she cried out. "She's got it!"

"Yeah," he called weakly, getting his balance back and swimming over towards Tideflower. The feather perched meekly in her hands, glowing softly, seemingly perfectly inert and in no hurry to vanish magically into her body. Still, Syaoran reached out his hands as soon he was close enough, and gingerly took possession of the feather. "This is it, all right."

As soon as it was in his hands, Syaoran felt the by-now familiar tingling sensation of magic, the subtle thrumming and warmth that he had come to associate with Sakura. He had to get it back to her right away! He clutched the feather close and stared around for his companions. "Mokona!" he called out. "Where are you?"

"Over here!" Mokona chirped happily. Kurogane and Fai were approaching, both of them somewhat battered from the battle with the serpent. Fai was holding his hand tightly over his side, where little ribbons of blood trailed from between his fingers.

"Fai-san, are you all right?" Syaoran asked worriedly, momentarily diverted from the feather.

"He'll be fine once he gets treatment," Kurogane grunted, one hand on Fai's shoulder to steer him. "Unlike  _some_  people, he wasn't wearing armor." Kurogane himself was limping, but seemed to have no serious bites or cuts, and looked rather smug about that fact. Fai rolled his eyes.

"We have the feather, we can go now!" Syaoran exclaimed happily. "As soon as we get back to the Witch's house where Sakura is, I'm sure we can some medical care for Fai!"

Fai raised an eyebrow, and Kurogane scowled at him. "Aren't you forgetting something, kid?" he growled.

"What?" Syaoran asked, somewhat nonplussed.

"The princess!" Kurogane exclaimed, gesturing at the young mermaid who floated nearby, watching them all with wide, sea-green eyes. "We can't just leave her here out in the middle of nowhere!"

"Yes, the responsible thing would be to escort her safely home," Fai added. "Especially since she risked her safety to come and help us, and we would never have survived without her aid."

"Oh… I…" Syaoran looked over at the mermaid princess and stammered, his face turning read. Of course, the princess was just a little girl, and she had put herself in such danger to help them. Syaoran would never forgive himself if they didn't make sure she was home and safe.

But… but… it was a long trip, and it would take even longer with them walking uphill, injured and tired. And no doubt there would be formalities that would drag out even longer, and… and every minute that he was separated from Sakura he became more anxious that something would happen at the last minute to snatch the feather out of their hands. They would be attacked by sea bandits on the trip back, or he would drop it down a crevice, or put it down somewhere in the palace and lose it, or  _something._  And meanwhile, back in the Witch's shop, Sakura was lonely and waiting…

"I don't need an escort!" the mermaid said indignantly, swishing her cuprous tail indignantly. "I'm not helpless! I made those serpents go away, didn't I? I can take care of myself!"

The three men looked at each other, and Syaoran sighed in resignation. "Princess, please allow us to see you back home," he said meekly. "Fai-san needs medicine, and we need to thank your father for his hospitality."

Taking pity on him, Fai suggested kindly, "Syaoran, perhaps it would be a good idea for Mokona to hold the feather? That way, its influence could allow her to use her magic."

"Oh… of course," Syaoran said, but hesitated. He recognized the logic in Fai's suggestion, but he still unreasonably didn't want to let the feather out of his hands. His fingers clutched it tighter.

"Hell, why waste time? Just have the manjuu send the feather back to the princess directly," Kurogane said. "If they can do it with an apple and a stupid chocolate cake, they can do it with a feather."

"Yes!" Syaoran's face lit, then fell. "But… but then I wouldn't be there when she took it back, and…"

"And?" Fai said teasingly, flipping Syaoran's hair.

Syaoran ducked his head forward. "And she might fall asleep, and… what if she hit her head on something, or…?"

Kurogane snorted. "Admit it, kid, you just want to be there so she can fall asleep in your arms."

Syaoran sputtered and felt his face heating so fiercely that even the cold water couldn't cool it.

Fai laughed out loud, and even Kurogane chuckled. Princess Tideflower joined in, enjoying the laughter even if she didn't understand the context; and the sound of all of their laughter echoed around the empty crater where only darkness had been before.

* * *

The merman king greeted them back with profuse gratitude and solicitous offers of medical aid, and accepted their assurance that they had met and dealt with the source of the danger with easy credulity. Almost as soon as the formalities were out of the way, he fell to scolding his daughter, who sulked and whined under the lecture.

"How many times have I told you and told you, you are not to leave the reef without an escort?" the king chided her.

"I wasn't alone! I was with Syaoran-kun and the others!" Princess Tideflower objected. "They were strong, they could protect me as well as any of the warriors here!"

"That's not the point!" the king said angrily. "You knew it was dangerous! You knew you were forbidden to go with them. You could have been hurt, even killed!"

"But I wanted to see what was out there," the princess said passionately. "I wanted to know what was threatening our kingdom! How could I just stay here and do nothing? You always treat me like I'm a child, but I'm not one! I'm eighteen!"

"Wait a moment," Syaoran said. "What?"

"Because you are our kingdom's most valuable treasure, that is why!" her father shouted back. "Whether you are eighteen or eighty-five, you will always be my daughter and our princess, and we -"

"I think it's time for us to leave, don't you?" Fai said. "Mokona, will you be able to make the circle?"

"Yup, of course!" Mokona said brightly, and sprang up from Fai's hands. The water began to warp and surge around them as the magic circles appeared, and cries of farewell from the surrounding mermaids filled their ears.

Syaoran didn't even hear them. " _Eighteen?"_  Syaoran sputtered disbelievingly. "But she - I thought she - isn't she still a young child?"

"No," Kurogane said, somewhat surprised. "Why would you think that?"

"Because she - " Syaoran almost wailed. "She doesn't have -"

"Syaoran, didn't you pay any attention at all when we were in the mermaid city?" Fai asked him kindly. " _All_  of the mermaids, male and female, have flat chests. Mermaids aren't like humans, you know."

* * *

Sakura was in the middle of sweeping the shop corridor - again - when she heard the familiar voices from the shop door. She gladly dropped the broom against the wall and ran out to greet them, beaming joyfully at her friends as though she hadn't seen them for months instead of days. "Fai-san! Kurogane-san!" she cried out. "Mokona-chan! Syaoran-kun! You're back, did everything go okay?"

Somewhat to her surprise, they were all dripping wet, water streaming in rivers from their clothes and hair. She began to feel a little apprehensive, especially when she saw the bruises and cuts on Syaoran's arms and the way Fai favored the bandage on his side. "Oh no, you're hurt! You'd better come inside right away!"

"You're so kind, Sakura-chan," Fai said, beaming at her. "But I think we'd better stay out here until we stop dripping, just so we don't damage the shop. But in the meantime, I believe Mokona has something for you?"

"Coming right up!" Mokona chirped, and opened her mouth impossibly wide. A moment later, the familiar glowing shape of a feather popped into view, and Sakura cried out happily and clapped her hands in joy.

"You found it! Oh, you found it!" she cried. "Thank you so much, all of you! I only wish I could have helped."

In a ritual they'd practiced many times by now, Syaoran plucked the feather out of the air and approached her, holding it out in his hands. As the feather touched her chest, she felt the familiar warm tingle as it melted in her body, and the floating lassitude that threatened another sleep spell.

As she sank towards the ground and sleep, she felt Syaoran's strong arms supporting her back, and she blinked up sleepily to see his serious, tender expression. Just before sleep took her, she blinked past him and frowned, as she noticed something from her lower vantage point that she hadn't before.

"Kurogane-san… where are your pants?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Notes: Yeah, Princess Tideflower is eighteen; Syaoran just jumped to conclusions about her age. And yes, that means that this version of Sakura is kind of a derp. Well, when you're part fish, you do the best you can.
> 
> More translation notes: the word Fai uses is actually a piece of advanced Celesian magical terminology. It refers to a specific concept: that of the magical leakage which occurs when a caster has insufficient control over his spell, with the connotation that the uncontrolled magic may gain a sort of sentience of its own and the implied warning that it may not necessarily be friendly to the caster. But since Mokona didn't have the space to translate that into a single word, and neither Kurogane nor Syaoran's language have an equivalent term, it got translated as 'emanations,' and sounded blurry in Syaoran's ears as he couldn't fully grasp the concept Fai was getting at. 'Manifestations' would have been another possible translation.


	5. Middle Earth I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ancient China as it never was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No, it has nothing to do with Tolkein.
> 
> Although China is our name for the country, they have always known themselves as 中國 which means "the country in the middle of the universe," The name comes first from the assumption that they were the center of the world, and second from the understanding that they were exactly in the middle between Heaven and Hell; and so it has been rendered in this chapter title as "middle-earth."

_"O great and enlightened Master Li," I said, "pray impart to me the Secret of Wisdom!"_

 _"Take a large bowl," he said. "Fill it with equal measures of fact, fantasy, history, mythology, science, superstition, and lunacy. Darken the mixture with bitter tears, brighten it with howls of laughter, toss in three thousand years of civilization, bellow 'Kan Pei' - which means 'dry cup' - and drink to the dregs."_

 _"And then will I be wise?" I asked._

 _"Better," he said, "You will be Chinese."_

-Barry Hughart, "Bridge of Birds."

* * *

In the neutral ground of the shop, they were all able to rest and relax. Fai's wounds proved shallow and healed quickly; soon none of them showed any worse signs of their last battle than a lingering soreness and colorful bruises. Kurogane had managed to re-equip himself with a spare pair of pants from the shop, and although the Witch had smirked, she hadn't even demanded additional payment for him. Within a few days, they were all rested and ready to move on to the next world.

The bigger problem was Syaoran. If he had been anxious leaving Sakura behind at the shop, he was nearly hysterical at the prospect of sending her out into possible danger without him. His objections grew increasingly erratic until Kurogane put a large hand on his shoulder and pulled him aside.

"Look, kid, things will be fine," he said gruffly. "You can count on me to protect the princess from any threats. And the wizard will be there to guide her in other ways. You can leave her in our hands."

"But she - " Syaoran started.

He leaned down towards Syaoran, drawing him in, and spoke in a quieter voice; "We will watch over her. Don't insult us by implying that just because we love her differently, means we love her any less."

Syaoran flushed scarlet, and looked down at the floor ashamedly. "I - I know," he said miserably. "It's just that -"

"It's just that you've built your entire world around her," Kurogane said, and Syaoran nodded. "I get that. But that's not her problem. It's yours."

Syaoran looked back up, eyes widening.

Kurogane looked to the side, his eyes distant-gazing. "When I served her, Tomoyo was the center of my universe," he said quietly. "But I wasn't the center of hers. I know that while I'm gone, her life continues... she has her own duties, her own pastimes, and other guards to watch over her." He was silent for a moment, then flashed a sharp, dangerous smile. "Even if none of them are as good as me."

"So what should I do?" Syaoran said in a low voice. His brows were drawn, his face troubled. Kurogane felt some sympathy for the kid.

He clapped him on the shoulder. "Accept that she can go a few days without you around," he said. "And that's good. That's how it should be."

Syaoran nodded, his chin wobbling a bit, and then it firmed. "Right," he said.

* * *

As soon as the travelers landed, a roar of voices and noise assaulted them from every side. More than noise; Kurogane staggered among a whirling blur of colors, shapes in vigorous movements, a hot solid wall of bodies that pushed and shoved at them from every direction and bawled obscene curses in cheerful voices when they would not move out of the way. A clamor beset him from every side, a cacophony filled with the sounds of humans, horses, baying geese, clanging metal, banging stone, high-pitched flutes, deep-voiced drums, jinging bells, sizzling fat, roaring flames and falling water. All of it, human and animal and metal and stone, with its own distinctive aura pressing down on him.

Every warrior instinct Kurogane owned kicked into high gear, paranoia jangled by the press of unknown people -  _possible enemies!_  - from every side and complete inability to hear or make out what was happening. He reached out long arms and grabbed the two shoulders nearest to him - skinny, at about chest-height and waist-height respectively, must be the mage and the princess - and dragged them bodily through the crowd towards the nearest wall, where they could be at least slightly out of the way, and have enough space to take a breath and look around.

It was evening, but the rising moon and fading skylight seemed remote amongst the press of the city. Buildings reared up on every side of them, peaked like waves with sharp-angled crenellations and curved, sloping roofs. They were not the tallest buildings the travelers had ever seen, but they crowded so tightly together it seemed as though removing one would cause all the rest to come toppling over. The upper stories leaned towards each other, or perhaps that was just an illusion generated by the multitude of wooden bridges and rope lines stretching from one window to another, stories off the ground.

The first story or two was built of rocks or bricks, close-fitted together and set with a sticky rice mortar, then sprouted smooth walls of wood and bamboo. All of it was painted over with a bright, cheerful orange-red, only the occasional doorway or lintel allowing the original dark color to show through. Countless lanterns hung from the eaves and balconies, crafted in a rainbow of colored papers in fanciful shapes; demons, dog heads, butterflies and dragons.

The streets were hard cobble, but they were hardly visible under the tramping feet of the crowd; indeed, hardly any of the street was left free between the rows of stalls and stages set up on either side. Food vendors wafted the smell of their produce hopefully into the crowd; other vendors whose wares were not so aromatic shouted at the top of their lungs for people to come, see, touch, buy; flowers and fans, cups and saucers, jewelry and bright-patterned silk clothing, charms and prayers, knives and scissors, brushes and combs, dogs and crickets and a thousand other sundries for sale.

Each of their brightly-patterned tents or sturdy wooden carts, however, had to battle for space with the platforms set up for a dozen varieties of entertainment. Dozens of watchers crowded around to cheer, jeer, and place bets on the games of dice, arm-wrestling, or some kind of card game played with tiles. Dancers and acrobats spun and leapt, lovely ladies with lutes or old men with pipes poured out competing melodies, while storytellers chanted on the corners. Kurogane was finally able to identify the noise that had called for his attention, three houses down, as a roped-off arena where a man and a woman armed with a pair of swords clashed furiously to the beat of a heart-tripping drum.

Beside him, Fai laughed. "Well, they certainly seem to be a lively sort of people, don't they?" he said in Kurogane's ear.

Kurogane would have smacked him if he could have gotten the elbow space free. Sakura reached out and tugged at the sleeve of a passing gentleman, with a long trailing mustache and a self-satisfied look about him. "Excuse me, Sir," she said, almost having to shout to make herself heard. "What is all this celebration about? Is there some kind of festival going on?"

"Eh? A festival? Of course not!" He stopped to look at her with an astonished expression. "Are you mad? What kind of a sad excuse for a festival would this be - no fireworks, no floats, no marching orchestras? No, this is just a normal market day."

"This is normal?" Kurogane said incredulously. He already had a splitting headache from the noise, and the press of bodies was making his muscles ache to draw Ginryuu and clear a path.

"Is this the first time you've been in Hangchow?" the man asked. His glance flickered to Fai's blond hair, and Sakura's cinnamon, and his face took on a condescending look. "From one of those far-off barbarian countries, eh?"

"You could say that," Fai said cheerily, gripping Kurogane's sleeve before he could punch the man.

"Well, you'll find things here are a bit more civilized than what you're used to. You're in the greatest city in the world now, after all." Giving them each a leisurely nod, he turned and began to walk off into the crowd. "Welcome to China," he called over his shoulder.

* * *

The little man sitting in front of them was unbelievably ancient. Kurogane could not help but stare at him in a sort of horrified fascination, wondering how anyone could possibly be so old and yet still live. The skin of his face was so creased by lines and wrinkles that it resembled a mud flat drying in the hot sun; it would be hard to make out the features of his face if not for the helpful delineation of several flying tufts of bone-white hair marking the location of his eyebrows, ears, mustache and beard.

His limbs were skinny and fragile-looking as a bird's, and when he moved they could practically hear the creaking and groaning of his joints. And yet the black eyes looked back at them out of the mass of wrinkles with a sharp glitter that warned of trouble, and his voice - though cracked and clouded with age - was firm and certain, betraying no hint of senility.

"Welcome to my office," he said in a brusque tone, waving around at the dimly-lit, incredibly cluttered study that surrounded them; all of the seats had been piled over with papers and knickknacks, including the one he was sitting on, quite heedless to the flattened and creased papers beneath him. "Pardon me that I don't get up - my knees don't bend quite the way they used to. My family name is Li and my personal name is Kao, and I have a slight flaw in my character."

"Thank you for your hospitality," Fai said, in Syaoran's absence having been elected the unofficial spokesperson of the group. "My name is Fai Flowright, a Wizard of Ceres. This tall brute is Kurogane, a warrior of Nihon, and this lovely young lady is Princess Sakura of the country of Clow. And this," he pulled Mokona out of his cloak, holding her out carefully on both palms, "is Mokona, a magical construct who has agreed to transport us between worlds in search of our goal."

"Pleased ta meetcha!" Mokona chirped.

The old man stared for a moment. He drained his cup of tea, leaving faint dark stains around the edges of his beard, put his hands on bony, weathered knees, and leaned forward. "All right," he said. "Pull the other one, it's got bells on."

"Everything we've told you is quite true," Fai said with a smile, and Kurogane reflected on the immense irony of hearing that statement come from his mouth. "The Princess had a number of beautiful, magical feathers, which were scattered and lost during a tragic accident. We have reason to believe that one of the feathers made its way to your city, but we don't know exactly where. We're having some trouble locating it, and everyone seems to think that you are the man for the job."

That part was true, at least. In their journey across the crowded city streets they'd been mistaken for traveling scholars, traveling circus, traveling priests, madmen and criminals; in each case, the person they'd talked to had referred them here. "Go and see Master Li," they'd said. "He's the best when it comes to this kind of stuff." Which left Kurogane wondering exactly who the hell this guy was, to have collected so broad a resume.

But the old man just snorted and poured himself another drink, apparently unmoved by the flattery. "Aren't you three a little old to be peddling fairy tales?" he asked skeptically.

"Please, can you help us?" Sakura asked, turning her big green eyes and sweet face to best advantage (not that she had any idea that she was doing it, of course.) "We're new in town, and we don't really know where to start. It's very important that we find it."

"Frankly, my dear," the old man told her in a kind tone - marked with just a hint of condescension - "I don't really see how this is my problem. It's true that things have been a bit slow around here, but I haven't quite been reduced to the level of acting as a retrieval service for young ladies' fashion accessories."

"But it's not  _just_  a feather," Sakura said, wringing her hands anxiously. "It's very special, and very powerful - if the wrong person gets hold of it, they could do terribly unnatural things with it!"

For a moment the Li Kao sat up straight, interest sharpening, but then it visibly faded again. "That may be," he said. "But I'm quite certain I would have heard about any unusual phenomenon or a rash of out-of-season disasters, and so far nothing has come my way."

"Look, you want payment, right?" Kurogane broke into the negotiations with some impatience. The old man radiated an aura of intense indifference; he was just barely receiving them with the politeness due to guests. Neither appeals to vanity nor charity were making a dent in his apathy; it was time to try old-fashioned greed. For a moment he wished that the kid were there; Fai understood magic, and Kurogane understood fighting, but Syaoran understood people's motivations better than any of them, even the princess.

"We don't have any money with us but," he exchanged glances with the magician over Sakura's head, "We could get some. Just tell us what your price is, and we'll meet it."

"My price?" The bushy white eyebrows pulled down, and Kurogane found himself on the receiving end of a gimlet glare that almost made him want to sit quietly at his desk and copy lines of classic literature as a punishment. "You want to know what  _my_  price is?"

He gestured with one veined, wrinkled hand to the wall of his study. "On the wall over there, gentlemen," he said. "Do you recognize that scroll?"

Fai obligingly turned in to look. "I'm afraid I can't read it," he said with an apologetic smile, "but from the format, the amount of silver guild and wealth of elaborate seal-stamps, I'm guessing it's an award of some kind."

"Close," Li Kao said with a grunt, and those sharp eyes seemed to stare away into the middle distance. "It is the diploma awarded to those scholars who take first place in the  _chin-shih_  examination, granting the highest rank of mandarin and opening the way to a lifetime of lucrative and prestigious employment in the Forest of Culture Academy, should any fool so wish to spend the rest of his life rotting his brains away in perfect harmony."

"What do you mean?" Sakura asked in some confusion. "It sounds like it's a great honor, why wouldn't you want to?"

There was a layer of bitterness in his voice that hadn't been there before, and the old man helped himself to another drink. "The problem with the Neo-Confucianism which has overtaken our country in the last century or so," he continued, "is that they fear nothing except for a new idea. Everything has to be done exactly according to forms, and no idea can be even considered unless it has a precedent in the annals of our revered ancestors. Oh, don't get me wrong -" he waved a hand expressively, still holding his wine jar. "Everything they taught us works perfectly well, but it does lead to the question: What's the point of devoting a lifetime to learning if everything that's permissible to learn can be memorized in five or ten years in the archives?

"After a childhood spent preparing myself for a lifetime of study," he went on, "I despaired to find that a lifetime only lasted a few years. I sought appointments in the government, and soon found myself running out of battles to direct as a general, civil projects to oversee as a governor, and offices to bribe my way into as a politician. I turned to drink. When my money ran out, I turned to gambling, which very quickly turned me to confidence scams, embezzlement, and the occasional straight-up burglary. That soon became unfulfilling as well, as it became shockingly easy to appropriate myself as much money as I pleased. Bored with making crime, I turned instead to solving it; solving mysteries lasted to entertain me for a good forty years before I realized that criminals tend to be human, and as such, extremely boringly predictable."

"So what you're saying is, you're bored," Kurogane translated. The old man's eyes glinted appreciatively in his direction.

"When you live to be as old as I have, you realize that the Neo-Confucians were right about one thing after all: there's nothing new under the sun," he said. "Unfortunately, the country has broken out in a suffocating bout of peace due to Emperor Tan's foresighted imperial policy; corruption is, if not down, certainly as petty and minor as it always has been; and not a single interesting crime has come to my door in almost ten years. That's my price, young crickets, if you think you can match it. Surprise me."

During the old man's monologue Fai had been wandering the room, apparently inspecting the decorations. He stopped before one of the shelves, studying a box of dark lacquered wood which was propped open to reveal a gleam within.

"Tell me, Master Li," Fai said, apparently casually. "Are you a great player of games?"

"Do you mean mah-jongg?" Li Kao asked. "Why, I wouldn't call myself an expert. Mah-jongg is mostly a matter of keeping track of the different suits of tiles and calculating the probabilities of which ones will next appear, but I never had the interest in dedicating the thirty-nine years necessary to play my way to the top of the league, so I'm afraid I'm little more than an amateur. Still, it's an enjoyable way to pass the time."

Fai turned to face the old man, and he was wearing a bright, disarming smile. "Well, then, I have a proposition for you," he said. "Let's play a game of Mah-jongg, and wager on the outcome. Should you win, we will quietly depart your household and look elsewhere. Should you lose, you will help us with our case free of charge."

"You are challenging me to a game of Mah-Jongg, then?" the old man demanded, his bushy eyebrows lifting.

"Oh no, not me," Fai said, still smiling. He stepped to the side, taking Sakura's slim shoulders and drawing the girl in front of him. "You will play my lovely companion, Sakura."

"Her?" the old man exclaimed.

"Me?" Sakura said, startled.

Fai smiled at her. "Well, it  _is_  your feather we're looking for," he told her. "It wouldn't be fair not to give you a chance to assist in the investigation!"

"But she's merely a child!" Li Kao exclaimed. "Fourteen, fifteen years at most, I would guess. That's the minimum years of apprenticed study to even be admitted to the lowest rank of the Mah-Jongg academy! And you seriously think to play against an expert?"

"Well, let's just give it a try, why don't we?" Fai said, still smiling. "Sakura-chan has a certain affinity for games."

The old man scrutinized Fai's smiling face with a hard eye, but failed to discover the joke. "Well, it's no great sacrifice on my part," he agreed begrudgingly, and there was a spark of intrigued interest on his face as he wondered what the smiling mask was hiding.

Li Kao brought down the box of tiles from its resting place, blowing off a thick cover of dust and shoving remains of paper and old dishes away from a corner of his desk. Sakura sat on a stool opposite him as he began counting out tiles, each one striking the polished surface with a loud  _click_.

"The full game of Mah-Jongg has four players, three hundred and thirty-two rules, twenty-eight variations, and can take up to fifty hours to play without breaks," Li Kao recited as he laid out the tiles. "So instead, we shall play a simpler version of the game known as the Dragon's Heart. It's a popular game among children and peasants, owing to its simplicity, and a greater reliance on the luck of the draw rather than on numerical calculation."

Kurogane began to see where this was going.

"There are four different suits of tiles, making up a total of one hundred and eight," he lectured, laying a row of tiles face-up in front of her and pushing each one forward as an example. "Bamboo tiles, flower tiles, wind tiles, and dragon tiles. Each suit has twenty-four tiles, with four wild or unmarked tiles which can be seen as any suit. If you match numbers from different suits together, they can be removed from the game. "

Sakura nodded, biting her lip adorably as she concentrated on the beautifully-decorated game pieces. "Uhm, I can't read any of them," she confessed in a small voice.

"That's quite all right Sakura-chan," Fai assured her. "Just look for tiles that have matching pictures to each other."

Li Kao quickly set up the playing board, with a small number of tiles piled neatly face-up on the center of the board. "This represents the heart of the dragon," he explained. "In the game of Dragon's Heart, one player is the Dragon Master, whose aim is to build the dragon's body out of tiles and bring it to life. The other is the Dragon Slayer, whose goal is to slay the dragon by piercing its heart and clear the board of tiles. Since this is the first chance you have had to play, you will take the role of Dragon Slayer."

"So, I'm trying to clear away all the tiles?" Sakura asked. "By matching them together?"

"That is correct," Li Kao said. His gnarled, blue-veined hands quickly shuffled the remaining tiles around, pulling three of them to himself. "And as the Dragon Master, my aim is to stop you. Each turn I will put down one tile," he said, placing a tile in demonstration. "If I can complete the body of the dragon, I win; if you can clear the board, you win.

"You draw seven tiles, and I will draw three," he said, shuffling the appropriate number of tiles into his hand. "You can only remove tiles that match the ones in your own hand, and you can only remove tiles on the outside edge that are not blocked by any others. You may continue to draw new tiles up to seven, but when you run out of moves, your turn is over. Do you understand the rules?"

"I think I understand," Sakura said after a moment. She reached out to the pile, and hesitantly drew seven of the smooth, shining tiles towards her.

Li Kao smiled and made his first move; he placed one tile on the board, neatly blocking off one of the limbs of the dragon. "Your turn," he said.

Sakura took a long moment to study the tiles in her hand, eyes moving over the unfamiliar patterns and decorations. She looked up at Fai. "I just match the ones that have the same symbols on them, right?" she said.

Fai smiled encouragingly but said nothing, crossing his arms and stepped back.

Sakura's eyes dropped to the board, studying the tiles making up the limbs and the eyes of the dragon. Hesitantly, she selected one tile from her hand and placed it on the table next to its counterpart that matched it. "And then this one goes away, right?" she said.

"Yes, precisely," Master Li said with a condescending chuckle. Sakura nodded and cleared the matching pair away. Then she placed down another matching tile from her hand and cleared the pair from the board.

And another.

And another.

Li Kao's patronizing smirk quickly disappeared into a scowl as the tiles rapidly disappeared from the playing board. When Sakura ran out of her original hand of seven, she drew seven more from the stack, and continued decimating the board. Within a single turn, all of the tiles had been cleared from the table.

She stopped and looked at the old man expectantly. "Like that, right?" she said.

The old man's jaw dropped, and he hastily attempted to regain his computer. "Well, that was, that was quite an extraordinary stroke of luck," he hedged, shooting her a piercing glance before scowling angrily at Fai, standing behind Sakura and trying to stifle his laughter. "Now then - any complete game of Dragon's Heart involves two rounds; one as the Slayer and one as the Master. Shall we, ahem, continue to the second round?"

Sakura nodded obligingly, and Li Kao gathered all the tiles together and shuffled them. He took considerably longer at it this time, his dexterous fingers moving carefully over the polished edges of the tiles, before quickly resetting the board. "Now then," he said, pushing three tiles over to her. "As the Master, you place one tile each turn. Your aim is to stop me from doing what you just did, by blocking off the tiles so that they cannot be removed. Do you understand?"

"Uhm," Sakura said, picking up the tiles. She looked up at Fai.

"Just place them however you feel best, Sakura-chan," Fai said encouragingly.

"Okay," Sakura said. She picked one of her tiles from her hand and placed it on the board.

This round of the game at least lasted longer than the last one, if only because Sakura was limited to one tile per turn and there were quite a few open spaces to be filled on the board. Still, Kurogane watched as the old man's face grew from perplexed, to irritated, to thunderous, and finally to a kind of bemused respect as Sakura's seemingly haphazard placement of tiles built up into unbreakable strongholds of double- and triple-reinforced castles. Despite the limited size of her hand, somehow every tile she drew was the perfect one for the situation, and every empty space she chose was precisely the one that Li Kao had been aiming for. The board filled quickly, until finally Li Kao was left with just one empty space.

At last Li Kao sat back on his cushion, chuckling slightly as he rubbed one of the small, polished squares between his fingers. "You play very well, my dear," he said admiringly. "I admit you gave me quite a scare at first. But your strategy has a weakness; once I start unraveling it from this one point, the entire structure will come apart. I believe now it's time to finish things." He placed the tile down on the table with a triumphant click, and reached to clear it from the board.

"Excuse me," Fai interrupted, leaning over him, "but you appear to have put down a seven of winds, and you are attempting to use it to clear a four of coins."

"What?" Li Kao snapped, glaring at the intruder. "Impossible! This is a wild -" He stopped, staring at the face of the tile sitting on the table; it was innocently, unquestionably a seven.

"Were you looking for this?" Kurogane moved forward, having spotted the tiny ceramic square when it tumbled to the floor. He stooped to pick it up, then held it out. "Looks like it fell out of your sleeve when you reached into it for your next tile."

"I never -" Li Kao sputtered; then he stopped, and after a moment he began to laugh.

Fai smiled innocently; Sakura looked worried. "Are you all right, Master Li?" she asked anxiously.

"I never in my life," Li Kao gasped between howls of laughter, "not since I started conning gullible merchants outside the Bower of Brilliant Companions at the tender age of seven, fumbled a card from my sleeve! There is something special about you indeed, my girl. Indeed, if I were sixty years younger, I might consider giving your young man a run for the money. Just think of the racket we could make together!"

"Oh, I do," Fai said sweetly. "So what do you say, Master Li? Will you fulfill your end of the wager?"

"Oh, yes, no doubt about it," Li Kao said, using the edge of his sleeve to mop the tears streaming from his face. "I haven't seen anything to match you three in twenty years. Pull up a seat, have a jar of wine. I've got some research to do."

* * *

They took him up on his offer of wine; and, when brought by a servant, plates of dried fruit and roast goose as well. At least, Kurogane and Fai drank wine - Sakura was curious, but Fai insisted that she make do with tea.

After a gulp of the local wine, Kurogane didn't question him; this was no local weak brew to serve in place of potentially unsafe drinking water. This wine was so thick it was almost a gel, pouring down his throat like honey, and it burned so sweetly he could almost feel the topmost layer of his throat peeling off. All in all, he approved, and he and Fai split several more jars of wine between them, generously (as far as Kurogane was concerned) sharing out small dishes for Mokona too.

Li Kao seemed oblivious to his guests, burying himself in the books and scrolls of his library with a determined fury. Occasionally he would go to the door and shout something incomprehensible, and the servant would hurry up with a new armful of crackling tomes. Li Kao would take a swig of his own wine, the dark liquor trickling unheeded from the side of his mouth to stain his white beard, and bury himself in the papers again.

It looked like they might be a while. Kurogane and Fai settled themselves in an out-of-the-way nook in the library, while Sakura wandered around studying the decorations in the ancient study. She was particularly entranced by a tiny, stylized set of acrobats wrought of silver, each one delicately balanced on a fine point on polished glass. At a nudge of the finger the tiny trapeze artist would swing back and forth, the strong man would lift weights and push them back and forth, and the acrobat would spin in endless circles around his bar.

Now that they had a moment of peace and quiet, Kurogane found himself studying his companion, and reflecting on the adventures of the past few days. It occurred to him that he'd left an important piece of business unaddressed. "Hey," he said abruptly, and Fai looked up in surprise, eyebrows raising over the rim of his cup. "I meant to say it before, but - thanks."

"Whatever for, Kuro-pon?" Fai asked lightly.

"For back on that water world," Kurogane elaborated, embarrassed at having to explain himself. Now that they were out of danger (and, in fact, had never really been in danger - but they hadn't known that then,) he recognized the effort Fai had spent trying to keep him afloat, and that his exhortations to drop his armor and swords had only been meant to help. "You know - when you were helping me swim."

"Oh, it was nothing!" Fai said, with a wide, vacant grin. "I could hardly let my Kuro-puppy get soggy and drown, now could I? No, no, the best he could manage on his own would be a doggie paddle -"

Kurogane growled, pressing his fingers to the bridge of his nose. "Could you be serious for the fifteen seconds it would take to accept my thanks?" he snapped in irritation.

He'd meant it as a rhetorical question, so he was surprised when the vacant grin slipped; in its place was a much smaller, gentler smile. "You haven't forgotten already, have you?" Fai asked him.

"Forgotten what?" Kurogane said, mystified by the abrupt change in tone.

Instead of answering, Fai's hand ran lightly over his own side, under his ribs, then traced a path across his bicep. Momentarily distracted by the path of those fingers, it took Kurogane a moment to realize what he meant - the injuries he'd sustained during the fight against the serpents, which Kurogane had helped him to treat.

"We all look out for each other," Fai explained, dropping his hand back to the bottle. "So no thanks are necessary. More?"

Kurogane looked at him for a moment, then held out his saucer for more wine.

"Got it!" Li Kao said triumphantly, striking his wooden desk with a thump that raised dust. All three of the travelers looked up, their attention immediately riveted.

As they crowded around the table, Li Kao spread out several different papers in an arc around him. "The earliest mention of this feather of yours," he began, tapping his finger on the oldest, crustiest-looking scroll. "Is in the records of a small Buddhist monastery outside Loyang. Actually, the feather appears in the very first volume of their records; the spot was little more than a well at a crossroads until about three hundred years ago. A shepherd was minding his own business there one day when the heavens opened up with a crack of thunder, brilliant light streamed down on an otherwise cloudy day, and a white feather with delicate black markings floated down to him from the sky."

"That sounds like Sakura-chan's feather!" Mokona piped up. Li Kao nodded.

"By itself, the appearance of the feather was miraculous enough," he explained. But when the local Buddhist monk from the nearby village tested it, he found that it had amazing properties - when the right sutras were chanted it would glow softly, and heal minor wounds or even cure the sick. They decided it must be one of the lost feathers of Karyoubinga, a human-headed bird deity who specializes in mercy and healing, and erected a shrine on the spot of the feather's appearance."

"Where is this shrine?" Kurogane began to ask, but Li Kao shook his liver-spotted head and moved on to the next paper, a large tome bound with beautiful black leather.

"Like all good things, it couldn't remain unmolested forever," he explained. "About twenty years ago the last emperor, Emperor Wen, was afflicted with a particularly painful and unpleasant round of gout. Casting about for some chance of curing his affliction, he soon heard of the miraculous feather, and commanded his soldiers to bring it to him. Which they did, in a parade with much fanfare, involving a cavalcade of priests, a small army of porters, and enough pomp to float a coronation.

"Once they had the feather in the palace," Li Kao continued, "the palace physician attempted to prepare it in the approved manner of all sovereign specifics - that is to say, grind it to a powder, infuse it in lotus oil, boil it dry and mix the residue into a salve of hippopotamus fat."

Sakura turned slightly pale at that, and Kurogane was suddenly thankful that Syaoran wasn't here; if he'd heard their plans to destroy the feather in a selfish-short-sighted attempt for a cure, he'd have thrown an apoplectic fit.

"Fortunately," Li Kao continued dryly, "they soon found that the feather, miraculously enough, resisted all attempts to grind it. When further attempts to boil it, pulp it, tear it and, I can only assume that by this time they were motivated out of sheer frustration or sheer curiosity, burn it to a crisp failed, the physician declared the feather a useless fraud and had it thrown out with the household garbage."

Kurogane put his hand over his face. "But that's not the end of the tale," Li Kao went on, moving to the third and final set of papers. "Although of course it is a death sentence to steal from the Imperial Grounds, even from the trash, there is a thriving black-market trade that exists in stealing up to the palace moat in the dead of night and combing through the royal trash. The most amazing things can turn up there. It's not so clearly described as in the first two texts, but the sales records clearly show that  _something_  of incredible value was recovered from the midden heap that night. It passed through half a dozen owners in as many years, and finally came into possession of the richest, most miserly merchant in Hangchow: Pawnbroker Feng, who owns a complex in Assessor's Square not five miles down the road from here."

"So it's here in this city?" Mokona cried out, clapping her hands joyfully. "Mokona knew it!"

"Where is this Pawnbroker Feng?" Sakura asked.

"Time to pay him a little visit," Kurogane growled, one hand stealing to the hilt of his sword.

"Now, now, Kuro-chi," Fai chided him. "He is a merchant after all. We could just ask to  _buy_  it from him. And," he said, and his smile became chilling, "if he doesn't wish to part with it, we can always… persuade him."

"Don't get too ahead of yourselves, gentlemen and lady," Li Kao said brusquely. He sat back in his chair, tapping his finger against his jaw as he eyed them narrowly. "Pawnbroker Feng is no pushover. He's one of the richest merchants in Hangchow, and you can bet he didn't get that way without stabbing a few business rivals in the back. By now he's so paranoid that everyone calls him by another name: Fearful Feng, because he jumps at every shadow and he spends almost all his profits on security. And that's a lot of profits - apart from the Imperial Garrison, Feng commands the largest private army in Hangchow. And he's no fool, either. If he's held on to the feather this long, he must have some idea of his value; and frankly, my friends, you don't have a prayer of getting your hands on enough money to buy it from him."

"But what can we do?" Sakura whispered in dismay. "We can't just give up!"

"Clearly, a more subtle approach is needed," Li Kao replied. "If I were sixty years younger, I would go with you myself to make sure the job got done right. Unfortunately, I'm not as spry as I once was; so instead, I'll offer you the next best thing."

Li Kao turned from his desk and made his hobbling way across the room to the wall, where he slid open a paneled window that overlooked the inner court of the house. "Little Wolf!" he shouted down into the courtyard. "Little Wolf, come here!"

The words seem to blur and ring uncertainly in their ears, and Kurogane shook his head in an attempt to clear it. A pounding sounded from the hallways further down in the house, that came closer every minute. A moment later the door burst open, and a flurry of dark hair and robes stumbled across the lintel. "Honored grandfather!" the newcomer said, clearly flustered and out of breath. "What is the matter? Are these barbarian guests giving you trouble?"

The travelers stared.

The boy was a little taller than the Syaoran they knew; his hair and eyes darker, so deep a brown as to be almost black. But aside from that this boy could have been his double, and in his face they could clearly see echoes of the old sage's features.

"This is my great-grandson, Li Xiao Lang," Li Kao introduced proudly. This time, the words sounded clearly in their ears, not translated for their meaning. "He is without question the scurviest, canniest, most unscrupulous street rat in Hangchow."

Sakura gasped, her hands flying up to cover her mouth. "Master Li!" she said in a shocked voice. "How can you say such things about your own great-grandson?"

"She is right, Honored Grandfather," a flustered Xiao Lang said. "It's discourteous to boast so openly about one's family in front of strangers."

"He can charm the wings off a crow and then steal their tail feathers when they turn to fly off," Li Kao said, ignoring the interruption. "If anyone can help you steal your missing treasure from Fearful Feng, this little thief will be the one to do it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The second world they visit is China - or more specifically, "Ancient China as it Never Was," based on the series of books by author Barry Hughart starting with Bridge of Birds.
> 
> The colorful character of Li Kao as well as the setting of China and much of the style of storytelling is borrowed from Hughart's books. If you liked Li Kao and would like to read more about him, be sure to check out his and Number Ten Ox's adventures in Bridge of Birds. If you didn't like him… well, read them anyway, because they're much better than my poor attempts at imitation!


	6. Middle Earth II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A web of plotting, scheming and lies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not trying too hard with any of the alters' names. 'Tideflower' was just a local translation of 'Sakura,' since they probably don't have cherry blossoms underwater. 'Xiao Lang' is nothing more than the pinyin rendering of this character's Chinese name - as opposed to Syaoran or Shaoran, which is the English transcription of his Chinese name as it is rendered in Japanese. Two levels of translation going on there.
> 
> Xiao Lang means 'Little Wolf'; in the older pinyin convention it would have been written Shao Lang. (For anyone who reads Holitsuba, Syaoran's twin brother was given the name Xiao Long, which means Little Dragon, and was one of martial artist Bruce Lee's childhood nicknames.) Add in the Japanese indifference to L versus R, and their habit of dropping ending g's off n sounds, and you can see it is simply the same name. Similarly Meirin is the same as Mei Ling, Syaoran's childhood friend from the anime version of Card Captor Sakura.

"No," Xiao Lang told them in a firm voice.

The four of them - five, counting Mokona - had migrated out of the Li mansion, and were now encamped in the common room of an inn on the other side of the market district, closer to where Master Li had told them Pawnbroker Feng did business. Kurogane had just suggested it was time to get started on their mission, when their guide - Xiao Lang - unexpectedly dug in his heels.

"What are you playing at, brat?" Kurogane demanded. "Your great-grandfather outright ordered you to help us out! Is this how you show obedience to your elders?"

"Master Barbarian, you seem to have a very poor understanding of how our family does business," Xiao Lang shot back hotly. "If I  _didn't_  milk you poor suckers for every last penny, my grandfather  _would_  disown me!"

"But, we don't have any money," Sakura protested anxiously.

"And if it was money you wanted, surely you could acquire that more easily on your own," Fai said in a reasonable tone. "So what else is it that you want from us?"

"At least one of you has at least a drop of sense to share between you," Xiao Lang said, turning to Fai. "Of course I don't want money. I want your help."

"Our help to do what?" Kurogane growled.

"Breaking into Pawnbroker Feng's house," Xiao Lang replied.

"But isn't that already what we're doing?" Sakura said, bewildered.

Xiao Lang gave her a withering stare. "Of course," he said. "That is exactly why I'm willing to work with you lot in the first place."

Sakura shut her mouth, flushing a bright red. Kurogane's glower on the little thief deepened, but he didn't seem to notice - or care.

"Fearful Feng has something valuable to you locked up in that fortress of a house," Xiao Lang went on. "As it happens, he also has something very valuable to me in the same house. Help me get it back, and I promise to help you recover this 'feather' of yours at the same time."

"Oh? And what exactly has he got that's so irreplaceable to you?" Kurogane asked, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

"My beloved Shang Mei Ling!" Abruptly, Xiao Lang's face lit up with an expression of such anxious, besotted adoration that in that moment, he looked exactly like their companion Syaoran. "She's been trapped in his terrible household for months - he forces her to work like a servant, and I'm afraid that any day he might decide to force his lecherous attentions on her! Help me save Mei Ling, and I'll help you!"

* * *

The story turned out to be a long and complicated one, as it unraveled over a dinner of pickled vegetables and rice.

Su-Lin Shang, more commonly known as Sodden Shang for a perpetual and rather pathetic state of drunkenness, had been a minor accountant for noble houses in the city. He had no family connections to speak of and no skill at managing money except that which was necessary to count out coins for another bowl of wine. But he did have a daughter, one beautiful enough to attract hordes of suitors from miles around to clamor for her hand. Xiao Lang, a friend of Mei Ling's since childhood who was already hopelessly in love with her, had been determined to win out over them all, but her father had other ideas.

In order to get rid of the suitors while attempting to parley his daughter's marriage contract more favorable, Sodden Shang had set out a test of challenges. Only one who managed to complete his heroic tasks would be worthy of his daughter's hand. For Xiao Lang himself, he set the task of facing and defeating the terrible red devil of Taihang Mountain, who feared nothing -

"How'd you beat him?" Kurogane wanted to know at this point.

"Easy. He feared nothing because nothing could destroy him," Xiao Lang replied. "I simply showed him a sack with nothing in it, and he was so terrified that he leapt into the sack so that it would no longer contain nothing. Then I tossed it into the river. Stop interrupting."

But when Xiao Lang returned triumphantly to Hangchow, ready to claim Mei Ling's hand, he found the Shang house in a shambles, completely deserted. Some pointed questioning around the neighborhood had brought out the whole sordid story: Su-Lin Shang's debts had been worse than anyone else had known, and all the while he had been playing his daughter's suitors against one another, the debt collectors had been knocking forbiddingly at his door. Once they were all out of the way Sodden Shang had sold off his business, his house, all his possessions, and moved abruptly to Loyang. All his possessions including his daughter, Mei Ling.

"That flea-infested, wine-rotting, stinking piece of dogshit sold his own daughter as a concubine!" Xiao Lang snarled, his face transformed by anger his eyes burning with vengeance. "Sold her off like a piece of furniture or livestock, except that even a pig would have better prospects in the markets of Hangchow than a sweet, innocent girl like Mei Ling! He condemned her to the life of a concubine or worse, and he didn't even care!"

"Calm down, kid," Kurogane said, shooting a quelling glower at a group of nearby patrons who were looking all too interested in Xiao Lang's impassioned storytelling.

"That's terrible!" Sakura exclaimed. "Can't you go to the police?"

"The police? Bah! They're useless!" Xiao Lang scorned the suggestion. "Even if half of them weren't terrified of Feng's private army, and the other half in the pay of the very same army, what could they do? It was a completely legal transaction… and there's no law against being a cowardly, double-dealing, turd-faced excuse for a father, anyway." Xiao Lang subsided into his seat, still fuming, but he made an obvious effort to get his temper under control.

"I've been trying to get a foothold in Fearful Feng's defenses for months now, without any luck," he said, looking over at them. "But with you three along, I just might have a chance. If you'll help me rescue Mei Ling, I'll get your feather for you."

Fai set his elbows on the table and leaned forward, resting his chin in his hands. He raised his eyebrow at Kurogane, who shrugged. "It's the princess' call," he said quietly.

"I think we should help him," Sakura piped up. He mouth was firmly set. "After all, if they're both in the same place, it should be possible to rescue them both at the same time. And besides, we should help people when we can."

"Well, then," Fai said, and put his hands down to smile blindingly at Xiao Lang. "We're in. What did you have in mind?"

* * *

They spent the next hour or so debating strategies - that is to say, Xiao Lang and Fai debated, Kurogane drank wine and Sakura befriended the barmaids. As far as the ninja was concerned two of them were far too alike for comfort; they both seemed to delight in fiendishly intricate schemes where a little swordwork and maybe an incendiary charge or two would do the trick much faster.

As a result, by the time Xiao Lang abruptly jumped up from the table and dashed out onto the street, Fai hot on his heels, Kurogane was hardly even paying attention any more. He had to grab Sakura and haul ass out the door, cursing hyperactive idiots in all worlds as they hurried to catch up with their companions. It was really impressive how fast Xiao Lang could move in this crowd, given how impatient and inconsiderate most of the passersby were; perhaps the trail of muttered curses and people hopping on one foot had something to do with it.

A loud whistle split the hubbub of the street, and Xiao Lang muttered a curse word too quiet for Mokona to translate as a squad of uniformed men trotted rapidly and unmistakably in their direction. "I should have known you'd attract the wrong kind of attention," he groused.

"They're not after us, are they?" Sakura said, her green eyes wide with surprise and fear. "But why? We haven't done anything wrong."

"Let me do the talking," Xiao Lang told them, and there was no time for anything else; the crowd melted away like butter as the squad of city guardsmen came puffing up to them.

"You there!" the leader shouted, waving the narrow, stiff bamboo cane that was his badge of office. In the right hands, it could be a fairly effective weapon - especially against an unarmed opponent. But against a real sword, Kurogane dismissed contemptuously, it wouldn't stand more than a second. "Cease and desist this instant!"

Xiao Lang turned towards them and bowed smoothly, his expression bland and inoffensive. "A thousand pardons to the Servants of Heaven for the inconvenience of distracting them from their usual pastimes with our miserable presences," he said. "What seems to be the problem?"

The city guard stopped for a moment, his face knotting as he tried to work out whether he had just been insulted, but then he pushed the matter aside and forged onwards. "Completely unacceptable!" the guard huffed, wheeling around to point his cane at Kurogane. "This miserable barbarian openly and blatantly walking our roads, armed with a sword he has no business carrying! Surrender the weapon at once, or return with us to the precinct office, you scurvy dog!"

Glowering, Kurogane drew himself up and placed a hand on Souhi. He didn't miss how the other members of the squad took a nervous step back as he did so. So they didn't like him carrying his sword, was that it? It would be a cold day in hell before he surrendered her to the likes of these weaklings.

"A thousand pardons, noble sirs," Xiao Lang interjected smoothly, "but I'm afraid that my humble companion speaks not a word of Chinese. He cannot understand your request, so how can he submit to it?"

Kurogane, who had been about to give the guards a piece of his mind, snapped his jaw shut and sent Xiao Lang a fulminating glare, which the boy blithely ignored.

"Well, he doesn't need to understand it, just to do it!" the police chief blustered, and started forward, hand reaching out for the sheath at Kurogane's hip. Kurogane clapped his other hand over the sword and sent him a deliberate look which promised all the slow vengeances Xiao Lang's declaration had barred him from saying out loud. The police chief blanched and stumbled back. "Well, you take it from him, then!" he said, rounding on the safer-seeming young man.

"Alas, if only it were that easy," Xiao Lang said with a sigh of sadness. "You see, this oversized hulk of a thug standing before you is in fact a great warrior of the Yamato clan, a barbarian tribe from the islands of the distant East, so backwards in culture that the great writings of Confucius have not yet reached them. As such they have no knowledge of civilized ways, instead living in clay houses built like pots and devoting all of their leisure time to swordplay instead of study. It is said that a warrior of Yamato must slay a thousand opponents with his bare hands before he earns the right to grasp the hilt of a sword."

The city guards took another shuffling step back, leaving a wide circle of open space around Kurogane and their leader. Kurogane couldn't resist a snort of contempt that earned him another six inches. Sakura was watching this with her hands held over her mouth and her green eyes wide, and Fai's grin was growing wider by the minute.

The leader of the guardsmen had turned the color of pale suet, but he stood his ground. "Well - well we're in China now, not Yamato!" he sputtered bravely. "S-so like it or not, he'll have to give up his sword! And that's all there is to it!"

"Indeed, honored keeper of the law, I fully agree," Xiao Lang said sympathetically. "Of course, my companion may not see it that way; the swords they wear are granted to them in a secret manhood ritual of warriors, the details of which I may not describe in the public street for fear of causing a mass panic and fainting of ladies present - but at any rate, a warrior of Yamato abides by the Ten Rules of the Life of the Sword above all other earthly principles, and one of those rules demands that he chop his way through ten thousand corpses before surrendering his sword to an outsider."

The guard leader's jaw dropped open and he swayed on his feet, but Xiao Lang was just getting warmed up. "Second to none are the devotion of the warrior monks of Yamato!" he exclaimed. "They honor the spirits of their swords as they would an ancestor - except, of course, that they believe each sword to be alive and have its own spirit, which constantly sings out for fresh blood! In order to properly honor the spirit of his sword, a warrior of Yamato is required to slaughter at least one person per day, and I'm afraid to confess, brave noble sirs, that he has not had the opportunity to meet an enemy in combat since breakfast this morning."

The leader of the guards made a tragic noise in his throat and staggered back a step; he would have stepped on his guardsmen's toes, except for the fact that the others in his squad appeared to be mysteriously missing. "Wait, brave lawmen," Xiao Lang called down the street at their fleeing backs. "Surely you wouldn't want my esteemed companion to have to fill his daily count with the blood of an innocent bystander? I haven't even begun to describe the special sequence of cuts, starting with the feet, by which a warrior of Yamato ritualistically disembowels his victims -"

This was too much for the leader of the guards, and he broke and fled down the street after his fellow policemen, yelping in terror. Xiao Lang broke off and turned back to his companions, dusting his hands off and wiping them on his robe. "Well, that takes care of that," he said. "Where were we?"

Kurogane glared at him. "So, kid," he growled in a dangerous voice, "does this mean that  _you're_  volunteering to be today's victim?"

Fai collapsed into the laughter he'd barely been holding back, whooping and staggering over to hang off Kurogane's shoulder. "Kuro-manly, you never told us all this!" he cried out between peals of laughter. "What's this about the great manhood rituals of the Yamato that are too scandalous for a delicate lady's ears? Kuro-warrior has been  _holding out on us~!"_

"Shut up! Nothing! He just made it up!" Kurogane snarled, shrugging to push Fai off his shoulder. "None of that had anything to do with me or where I came from! Nihon is a great society, and there's no lack of civilization and learning and - and we do  _not_  live in clay pots, dammit -!"

"But, Kurogane-san," Sakura interrupted, taking hold of his sleeve and looking up at him with big dewy eyes, "you aren't mad, are you? After all, he just said it to get rid of the policemen so you wouldn't have to give up your sword…"

Kurogane snarled in exasperation and looked up at the sky, begging the gods for patience. "Fine," he grumbled at last, pushing Fai away from him firmly and crossing his arms over his chest. "Just so long as you know not to believe a damn word that comes out of that little liar's mouth."

"Of course not," Xiao Lang said, completely unperturbed by Kurogane's statement. "You should have known that already."

* * *

Kurogane fumed as they set off once more, Xiao Lang leading the way - but slower now, as though looking for something.

"There," Xiao Lang said. "Just leaving the perfume shop - there he is, Fearful Feng himself."

It took a moment to pick the man out of the crowd without pointing or being too obtrusive about it. But once Kurogane looked he saw the way people parted around the ratty little man and his entourage, shrinking away as though terrified - or disgusted - to cross his path. Fearful Feng wore a set of riotously colorful robes that his face completely failed to live up to, bedecked with celestial symbols and embroidered around the hem with tiny animal friezes. In one hand he clutched a purse, and in the other, a stick with a string of bells on it. Two stony-looking bodyguards flanked him, and a thin man with spectacles strapped to his face and a large ledger brought up the rear.

"He doesn't look like much, does he?" Fai remarked.

"He doesn't look like a very nice person," was Sakura's judgment.

Kurogane tensed, hand drifting towards his sword as he eyed the bodyguards. "They're not so tough," he assessed. "I could take them out, and we could wring the feather out of that rabbit in five minutes."

"In the middle of a busy street less than four blocks from the barracks? I think not," Xiao Lang said coolly. "It would take more than a bit of misdirection to get the guards off your tail in that case. No, we will solve this in a civilized manner." He started through the crowds towards Feng and his men.

"What are you doing?" Kurogane hissed after him.

"Talking to him," Xiao Lang threw back over his shoulder. "Pretend you don't speak any Chinese. Act like barbarians - it shouldn't be hard."

With a bemused smile on his face, Fai trailed after the youth. Kurogane and Sakura exchanged a glance; she shrugged, he vented an exasperated sigh and followed.

"Pardon me, Esteemed Merchant Master!" Xiao Lang accosted the small merchant party; the pointed, ferretlike nose turned in his direction with a cold, disapproving frown. "I have a business proposition for you!"

"What is it?" Feng snapped, shaking off Xiao Lang's hand from his sleeve and inching back until he was between his two bodyguards. "I'm a very busy man! I don't have time to talk to every ragamuffin on the street!"

"One thousand miserable regrets for imposing on your time, Esteemed Merchant Master!" Xiao Lang exclaimed, wringing his hands and whining in a servile fashion. "But when my master saw you here on the street, his excitement could not be contained! He's been seeking an audience with you for days!"

"Your master?" Feng's eyes raked the crowd, and he frowned deeply. "Who do you mean?"

Xiao Lang back up a step, and subtly kicked Fai in the ankle. Thus prompted, Fai gave Fearful Feng his best and most blinding smile, then bowed. As he straightened up, he babbled a string of complete nonsense that sounded like a query.

"A foreigner?" Fearful Feng's expression transformed into astonishment, with a hint of nervous terror. He backed away another step. "I don't see what business he could have with me!"

"A foreign doctor, Esteemed Merchant Master," Xiao Lang explained. "He has traveled thousands of miles from the barbarian land of Crete in order to seek out the wisdom of the ancient Chinese masters. Since your knowledge of medicinal goods is said to be unparalleled, naturally he was most eager to speak to you."

"Medicinal goods?" Feng looked back at Fai, puzzlement writ clear on his features. "I don't…"

Fai waved his hands, his eyes bright as he invented a new string of nonsense babble. Xiao Lang listened gravely, then turned to Feng and 'translated'; "He means tea, of course, Great Medicinal Master," Xiao Lang said. "He has heard of the wondrous properties of the Chinese green tea; that it can heal wasting diseases, cure hangovers, and even restore youth! Why, stories of the venerable monks who live to be a hundred and twenty drinking nothing but tea have reached as far as Crete, and of course a doctor could not help but come and investigate this miraculous substance!"

Fearful Feng sputtered, seemingly at a loss for words. "But - that's not - there's no - ah, of course, uh, the sale of tea is prohibited to foreigners, so of course I couldn't…"

Fai interrupted him with another nonsense phrase, this one followed up with a smile and a sly wink. "He says," Xiao Lang translated, "that such valuable medicine would be worth twice its weight in diamonds, and of course he would be prepared to make quite a sizeable purchase…"

"Really!" All hesitation vanished from Feng's eyes, and his face took on a crafty, avaricious look as he glanced around. "Well, well, I'm sure we can come to some agreement… but a busy street is hardly the time, eh?"

"If you say so, Great Merchant Mogul," Xiao Lang replied obediently. "Would you care to come back to my master's hotel and discuss it further?"

"No, no!" A brief look of terror crossed Feng's face. "It's not safe… I mean, my own mansion has much better security. Why don't you come to see me there - say, tomorrow night?"

Xiao Lang turned to Fai and said a string of nonsense words; Fai frowned theatrically, then reluctantly nodded his head. "Tomorrow night it is, then," Xiao Lang said, turning back to Feng. "We'll be there."

"Okay, kid, what was that all about?" Kurogane growled as he caught up to them on the street. "What was all that bull about doctors and miracle tea and diamonds?"

"The fastest way to get a man to open his purse to you is to convince him that he's about to put something in it," Xiao Lang replied, unfazed. "There's normally a two-week waiting period to do business with Feng, but we've just jumped the queue; and since what he's proposing to do is scandalously illegal, he'll be careful to conceal it from the authorities as well. All we have to do is show up tomorrow night with the 'doctor' in tow, and we'll be in."

"A doctor, hmm?" Fai looked terrifyingly thoughtful. "Xiao Lang, you terrible person, are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"I think so," Xiao Lang replied, "but we'd need at least two jars of poppy extract, an iridologist's practicing license, a whole clove of cayenne pepper, and a turkey baster. As it is, we'll just have to make do with what we've got."

Xiao Lang turned to Sakura, reaching into his sleeve to pull out a sheet of paper and a stick of charcoal. "We'll need the things on this list," he said. "After you get all these, meet us back at the inn."

"Wait, why me?" Sakura wanted to know. "Where are all of you going?"

"Breaking into Fearful Feng's house," he said blithely.

"Breaking in?" Sakura protested. "But that's incredibly dangerous, isn't it? You and Master Li both said that it was heavily guarded!"

"Which is why you're going shopping," he said. "Your two overtall companions seem like they can handle themselves, but you'd just get in the way." He ripped the sheet of paper in half and handed it to her.

Sakura frowned stormily, then sighed at the list he gave her. "I can't read this," she said.

Xiao Lang rolled his eyes. "I should have known," he said, reaching for the paper again. "How about if I draw little pictures of each -"

Sakura shoved the piece of paper back into Xiao Lang's hands. "How about you just  _tell me_  what you need," she snapped.

Fai pranced back over to Kurogane, slinging his arm over the bigger man's shoulder. "Wasn't Kuro-puppy impressed by my performance?" he chirped. "I thought I was very good!"

"Impressed by what?" Kurogane shot back, shrugging off the clinging arm. "That you can run your mouth indefinitely without saying a single meaningful word? I already  _knew that."_

* * *

"Here we are," the little thief said, turning off the street into a narrow, cluttered alleyway. He stopped in front of a dead end, a stone-and-mortar wall about the height of Kurogane's head, topped by a peaked slate roof.

"Here? This is Pawnbroker Feng's house?" Fai asked in startlement. "I was expecting something a little more grand."

"Actually, we've been walking past Pawnbroker Feng's house for the last six blocks," Xiao Lang said dryly. "This is just a nice quiet, discreet spot for us to make an attempt on the outer wall." He reached down and unclipped a discreet, brown leather case from under his belt; it came as no surprise to Kurogane when the pouch unfolded to reveal a wickedly multi-pronged grappling hook and a length of sturdy plaited silk.

"I don't get it," Kurogane said. "I thought this Feng guy was supposed to be so afraid of everyone that his home was impossible to break into."

"For the most part, yes," Xiao Lang replied. "But as it happens, there's only one thing that Fearful Feng is more afraid of than living enemies."

"And what's that?" Fai asked.

"Ghosts," Xiao Lang said, and pointed to the corner of a roof, just visible through the trees over the roof. "As everyone knows, ghosts can only travel in straight lines; any roof or road that's built with a curve in it will repel them."

"Is that what they're for?" Fai asked in some surprise. "I've seen those everywhere!"

"No prudent man would build a house or wall without them," Xiao Lang said. "And it looks like Feng is more prudent than most. You know, they say that criminals are a superstitious lot, but I've generally found that they have nothing on ordinary men. And superstition," he said, whirling his grappling hook around his hand for a few seconds to build up speed before he tossed it expertly over the gracefully hooked crenellations, "is a criminal's best friend."

"This was a lot easier than I expected," Fai noted as they dropped over the wall into the lush, well-manicured garden beyond it. "What was stopping you from doing this before?"

"That was just the outer wall," Xiao Lang reminded them. "The inner keep is far taller - impossible to scale. All Feng's most valuable possessions are kept within a well-guarded chamber within that, including his strongbox, and collection of beautiful serving girls.  _That_  building is guarded all twelve hours of the day, by fierce hounds and unimaginative men who are immune to all manner of persuasion, bribery, intimidation  _or_  seduction."

"You've tried all four?" Fai inquired sweetly.

"And that's just the  _dogs._ The guards are even worse," Xiao Lang said, ignoring this interjection. "We can't possibly hope to sneak in."

"Then what are we doing here in the first place?" Kurogane demanded.

"Laying some groundwork," Xiao Lang answered. "Keep quiet."

They came to a second building, this one looming high overhead. The stones fitted together too close and smooth to offer any handholds, and the first window slits didn't appear until nearly twenty feet up. Xiao Lang tilted his head back, apparently counting windows until he found the one he was looking for; then he stopped, and let out a long low whistle of a three-part scale. He paused for a few seconds, then repeated the tone.

At length the window above opened, and Kurogane glimpsed metal bars set into the frame. Fabric rustled, and the shadow of long black hair framed a white face peering out the window. "Is that you, Xiao Lang?" a female voice whispered hoarsely.

"Mei Ling!" All at once the young man's cool, patriarchal features were transformed by an animated glow. "It's me! I've come to see you!"

"It's about  _time!"_ It wasn't quite a shriek, since the girl apparently had enough sense not to attract the guards, but it was otherwise quite close to it. "Where have you  _been?_ I've been stuck in here for  _months!_ Fat lot of good you are!"

Kurogane and Fai exchanged a disbelieving glance. From Xiao Lang's enraptured descriptions of his lady-love - serene, lovely, beautiful, enchanting… they'd been expecting someone much more kind and sweet-natured. Someone more like, well, Sakura; but the young woman's irascible voice sounded about as far from "sweet-tempered" as you could get.

"I was out of the city on a quest for your father, Mei Ling!" Xiao Lang protested. "I had to prove to him that I was worthy -"

"Oh,  _stuff_  your quest, Xiao Lang!" the girl exclaimed. "Father never had any intention of dealing fairly with you, and you should have known it! I can't believe someone as clever as  _you_  imagine you are would just go trotting off on a wild goose chase like that. I  _told_ you -"

"Mei Ling, there really isn't time for this," Xiao Lang whispered urgently. "I've got a plan to get you away from Fearful Feng and get him to leave you alone forever, but I need your help."

"What do you need me to do?" Mei Ling asked suspiciously.

"You're in the inner keep, where he keeps all his strongboxes," Xiao Lang replied. "Would you be able to sneak into Fearful Feng's treasure room and take something out of there?"

"Are you insane?" the girl hissed. "If he caught me he'd have me horsewhipped! And that smelly accountant of his does the inventory every morning at sunup! And even if I could, there'd be nowhere for me to go! The first thing they'd do is search the inner quarters, and -"

"Don't worry about any of that," Xiao Lang interrupted. "You'll be long gone before that happens. The important thing is, can you do it?"

"I suppose," Mei Ling said grudgingly. "But I'm not sticking out my neck for you without a damn good reason! What are you up to, Pup?"

"Pup?" Fai whispered to him, eyes sparkling. "As in, Little Puppy? For real?"

Xiao Lang's ears reddened. "We were playmates together," he snapped. "Now's not the time. Mei Ling! I promise that by midnight tomorrow you'll never have to worry about Fearful Feng again, as long as you trust me on this. Please!"

"All right," Mei Ling said at last. "I'll give it a try. But this is the only thing I'm doing for you, Li Xiao Lang! See if I don't!"

"Thank you," Xiao Lang said softly. "Now, here's what you need to do…"


	7. Middle Earth III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A daring heist, and an unexpectedly familiar encounter.

"This has got to be the most idiotic thing I've ever taken part in," Kurogane muttered sourly as they filed up the walkway of Fearful Feng's estate.

The lights and decorations looked downright austere compared with the gaudy profusion of the market square, but what it lacked in clutter it more than made up for in sheer ostentatiousness. The marble-tiled path passed through a series of elaborate, topheavy gates plated with silver and gold, each one fashioned like the head of a snarling dragon whose teeth formed a heavy metal portcullis; and, if Kurogane was not mistaken, fully functional murder holes lined the walls and ceilings of each gate.

"You could have stayed home," Fai said mildly.

"I figured someone had to come along to fight your way out of trouble when this whole scheme goes south on you," Kurogane said. Thankfully Xiao Lang had not tried to force him into any ridiculous outfits; in fact he'd insisted that Kurogane don one of the Japanese-style  _hakama_  from Outo, with the symbol of the rising sun displayed prominently on both sleeves and a headband. Kurogane still felt a little foolish, but if he felt low on dignity, all he had to do was stand next to Fai.

With help from Mokona, who was waiting for them back at the inn, they had dressed Fai up even more outlandishly than usual. One of Kurogane's shirts (too large,) and a pair of Syaoran's trousers (it was disturbing that they even fit on his hips, and Kurogane preferred not to think about how that worked,) both from a Western-style world several jumps ago and in completely clashing colors. The monstrosity on his head might once have been able to call itself a hat, before Xiao Lang and Mokona had agreed between them that one feather was one-tenth the number of feathers needed. The combined effect was well past "foreign" and hovering somewhere around "ludicrous." Any man with even a drop of self-respect would have hid his face in shame, but Fai just minced cheerfully along like he was having the time of his life.

Fai laughed, and took a half-skip down the gaudy walkway. "Always such a pessimist!" he said. "Lighten up a bit, Kuro-gloom! You can smile, just once, I promise it won't crack your face."

"No, no, don't encourage him to smile," Xiao Lang said. "His dyspeptic annoyance is just the right touch to put on our disguise."

Kurogane glowered at their guide. Somehow, having the obnoxious kid's approval only made him want to change his attitude to spite him. Of course, his annoyance only fueled his bad mood, sending him right back to ground zero. Stalemate.

Out of the whole circus they represented, only Sakura and Xiao Lang were dressed in plain, subdued clothes; Xiao Lang in normal Chinese servant's garb, muted green and grey, and Sakura in a drab-looking Western style dress. Xiao Lang had insisted that Sakura pose as Fai's servant, rather than his apprentice or his daughter, and warned him against showing too much affection around her.

"It'd be best to just leave her behind," Xiao Lang had said, ignoring Sakura's expression, "but if what you told me about the girl and the feather are true, then she just might be the lynchpin to bring the whole thing off."

So Sakura trailed along behind them, gawking at the elaborate gardens visible beyond the richly-appointed walkway. Fearful Feng had the money to import the rarest and most exotic plants not only from every province of China, but from every corner of the known lands; every distant location that China had ever conquered or traded with. Unfortunately, the results had been jumbled together with little thought to their ultimate arrangement, and jungle vines warred with cacti while tropical flowers drooped next to bushes of alpine herbs.

The walkway wound to its end in front of an imposing stone edifice; granite blocks fit together to provide a fortress in the heart of the city itself, with actual arrow slits glaring down from above them. Despite all the paramilitary ardor, however, Fearful Feng was still a businessman at heart, and businessmen didn't make money by walling out their potential customers. Tonight the iron gates were flung open, and rich inviting lantern light flowed from within along with a flood of saliva-inducing aromas.

Once inside, Pawnbroker Feng was waiting to greet his guests; he was on his best behavior tonight, sparing barely an appalled look at Fai's outlandish outfit as he greeted them courteously. Fai was ready to put on a show again, his eyes sparkling brightly as he waved his hat through the air and babbled a stream of musical-sounding nonsense. Kurogane thought he must have been practicing, since he'd incorporated sounds in his "barbarian tongue" that surely could never have been part of  _any_  human language. Xiao Lang was right on cue to 'translate' his nonsense, however, into all the appropriate courtesies and a promise to discuss business after the meal. Fearful Feng's eyes gleamed at that admission, and he barely refrained from rubbing his hands together with glee as he invited them to sit and eat.

When it came to impressing visitors, Feng spared no expense; the palatial room was decked out with luxurious tapestries and the food served was sumptuous. Course after course of jellied eels, pickled plums, grilled sparrows served whole on sticks, platters of quail's eggs, tender vegetable hearts marinated in soy sauce, duck tongues glazed in honey, mushrooms simmered in white wine with bamboo shoots, jars of peaches in sauce, crispy sugar-glazed crickets and rich truffles passed down the tables to the guests' place of honor. The gourmet food and fanfare couldn't be cheap, yet if Fearful Feng was able to close the deal with the sale of tea to this ignorant barbarian, he would recoup his profits tenfold.

Yet Kurogane couldn't help but notice that neither the sumptuous food nor the prospect of massive profits seemed to be putting Feng in a good mood. The little man seemed peevish and irritable, favoring one side of his face; and indeed there was a reddish, painful-looking lump swelling along one cheek that made his face look distorted and bloated.

Once the initial fanfare of welcome and hubbub of the food being served had died down, Fai looked up at Fearful Feng on the platform with bright, appraising blue eyes. He pointed one long white finger at their host and recited a string of nonsense, ending on a rising note like a question.

On cue, Xiao Lang rose and bowed, and addressed Fearful Feng as he 'translated' for his master. "Most esteemed purveyor of fine food and goods, are you in good health?" he said. "As you know, my master is a renowned doctor from the barbarian lands beyond Crete. He is curious as to the cause of your affliction and wishes to offer his diagnosis and prescribe a physick."

"I'm fine, I'm fine," Fearful Feng said peevishly. "A sudden acute pain on my cheek which flared up overnight; my own physicians have already diagnosed a toothache and have prepared a poultice for it."

Fai tilted his head to the side, blue eyes artfully concerned and curious. He made another query, this one ending with a gesture towards his plate.

"A toothache? Surely not," Xiao Lang said. "After all, you have been eating your dinner with no sign of pain."

"Why - yes," Fearful Feng said, looking at his plate in puzzlement. "I suppose I have. But what else could it be?"

Fai stood up, swept off his ridiculous hat and placed it over his heart as he bowed. "My master wishes to examine you," Xiao Lang translated. "Completely free of obligation, of course, as repayment for this most excellent meal you have provided us."

"Er - " Feng hesitated for a moment, but an attempt to purse his lips turned to a grimace as his cheek throbbed. "Yes, I suppose I'll try anything! You can't do any worse than those quacks I employ as physicians. It's a wonder I even bother to pay them at all!"

Fai purposefully approached the head table where Feng sat, and Kurogane had to admit; in spite of the ridiculous clothes, he managed to project a very convincing demeanor of cool authority. He peered into Fearful Feng's eyes, took his pulse three different ways, pinched his skin and tsk'ed disapprovingly at the results. From one of the wide floppy folds of the oversized shirt he produced a small horn, which he used to listen to Fearful Feng's heartbeat and the sound of the breathing in his chest. Another sleeve produced a tiny pair of scissors, which he used to cut off a tuft of Feng's eyebrow hair and hold it up to the light, his expression stern.

"What is it?" Fearful Feng asked at last, unnerved by all these elaborate productions. "What's wrong with me? What's caused that lump?"

Fai turned towards Xiao Lang and said something. "My master wishes to know about your recent health," Xiao Lang reported. "Have you recently experienced any of the following: fatigue, pain in the stomach or chest, aching joints, periods of unexplained anxiety, restlessness, difficulty sleeping, or perhaps hallucinations - for example, attributing human motivations to inanimate objects, or perhaps imagining that someone has been in your room while you slept?"

Despite himself, Kurogane couldn't help but admire the artistry of Xiao Lang's bullshit. He sounded so very confident and earnest, his face practically glowing with sincerity, that it was easy to forget that fatigue and joint pain afflicted almost every man over a certain age, and indigestion was almost a given on a diet this rich. Or that both the painful and irritating welt and the disturbed sleep could have another cause, such as for example someone entering his bedroom while he slept and inserting the tiny thorn of a stinging nettle into his cheek. Hair-fine, the thorn would be almost invisible and undetectable among the red and swollen pain of the injury, and yet such plants were common enough to be found on a casual walk through Fearful Feng's own garden.

"Why, yes!" Feng said, his expression transformed with astonishment. "How did he know? What does that mean?"

Now looking very solemn, Fai returned to his table at the other side of the room and spoke a quick string of nonsense to Xiao Lang, shaking his head as if in regret for the recently - or imminently - departed.

"Master Feng, I hate to admit it, but the situation is grave," Xiao Lang said after listening for several minutes. "This is no ordinary welt; this is a symptom of a potentially much more serious problem. I regret to inform you, that in cases as far advanced as your, the survival rate is only one in one thousand."

"What?" Fearful Feng cried, clutching at the arms of his chair. "But how can this be? Isn't there any medication?"

"Apart from some palliatives to reduce the pain and swelling, no," Xiao Lang said after consulting with Fai. "The only solution is to remove the source of the ill. Then you will recover swiftly with no further treatment needed. But if you fail to do so, then you will surely die."

The statement rang out through the dining chamber, and Fearful Feng broke out in a sweat as his face went pale. He trembled. "What is it, what is the source?" he cried out. "Tell me, so that I may rid my household of its influence immediately! Please, sir doctor, I'm far too young and innocent to die!"

"Indeed, we will do everything in our power to postpone that final hour," Xiao Lang said solemnly. "Master Feng, it seems that you have earned the grudge of a moon fairy."

"A what?" Feng said, losing some of his terror as he sat up straight in perplexity.

"A moon fairy," Xiao Lang repeated a little louder, ensuring that every guard and guest in the chamber would overhear. "You are lucky indeed never to have heard of them before, Pawnbroker Feng, for of all the ghosts and demons and fairies that walk the earth the moon fairy is among the most dangerous. It can take on human form, as many of the malicious spirits do - usually that of a young woman, pale-skinned as the moon and with hair as black as night. I must ask you, Feng - is there any possibility that over the past few months that you've come in contact with any person or thing that matches that description?"

"Yes - there was that Shang girl, but -" Comprehension slowly crept across Feng's face. "But - but that's impossible!" he blustered.

"However, like any other spirit who takes on human form, there is always a telltale sign," Xiao Lang continued; he had the entire dining chamber spellbound by this time, hanging on his every word. "In this case, no matter how beautiful the moon fairy appears, you can always tell by the eyes - the blood-red eyes, a color found in no human face!"

A number of people looked apprehensively towards Kurogane, then gulped and started to edge away. "Indeed," Xiao Lang said as he noticed their reaction; "the wild barbarians of Yamato have had much contact with the moon fairies over the years, and perhaps the beauty of their maidens overcame caution a time or two in the past. But every warrior of Yamato is trained to recognize and kill a moon fairy on sight, for they are deadly."

Kurogane remembered just in time that he wasn't supposed to be understanding a word of this; he concentrated on looking peevish and uncomprehending, which fortunately wasn't too hard. He wondered why no one else had noticed that Xiao Lang wasn't even pretending to 'translate' for Fai any more.

"Deadly?" Fearful Feng quavered. "But, how?"

"Other spirits have deadly claws, or dreadful stings, or man-hunting teeth slavering with saliva," Xiao Lang declaimed eloquently. "And yet the moon fairy is still the most deadly of all the magical folk. Even the glance of their eyes on your skin can strike like the blow of a hand, leaving red and painful marks behind. But that pales as to nothing when compared to the touch of their hand! So deadly is their touch, that it can strike a young and healthy warrior dead in a flash of light!"

"No, surely not," Fearful Feng said, but his voice was weak and unconvincing. "That pretty little thing -"

"You bear the mark of the moon fairy, Pawnbroker Feng; you have laid eyes on her. But have you touched her skin? Answer me, Feng, because your very life depends on your answer -  _have you touched her skin?"_

Xiao Lang was bellowing by this time, and for a moment the smooth slick con man's mask slipped. The fury that showed through was real, uncontained and passionate, and Kurogane knew that this was no act; if Fearful Feng answered in the affirmative, then he would not walk out of this chamber alive.

"No! No! I never laid a hand on her!" Fearful Feng squealed, his face gone the color of suet. He was trembling hard enough to make the decorations on his hat rattle. "But… but this is impossible! I bought the girl from her own father - her own perfectly human father - months ago! She's never shown any trace of the uncanny before. I  _paid_  for her!"

"Honored Merchant, is it possible that the man you bought her from was scheming against you?" Xiao Lang asked shrewdly, calming somewhat and regaining his charismatic demeanor. "Because they can pass so closely for humans, moon fairies have often been closely involved with assassination and conspiracy. The death is completely untraceable by any normal forensic examiner, and could pass for a natural death if not for the gruesome expression of agony and terror that remains of the faces of its victims."

Trying to convince a paranoid that his rivals were plotting against him was as easy as giving candy to a baby, and Fearful Feng's face purpled with rage as he considered this new theory. "Why, that sniveling fleabitten wretch!" he sputtered. "To think that he would dare sabotage me like this! I should never have let him pay off his debts with only selling his daughter. That's the last time I show charity!"

He turned towards the captain of his bodyguards. "Drag the girl up here!" he demanded savagely. "We'll have the truth of this plot out in no time!"

"But… sir…" The head bodyguard hesitated, sweat standing out on his forehead. "If she is a moon fairy… and… horrible death to touch her…"

Fearful Feng's teeth grated. "Oh - very well. ASK her to come up here, and you don't have to touch her at all. Unless," a nasty smile lit his face, "she resists."

During the wait for the guards to find and fetch the girl, the atmosphere in the room was tense - only Fai somehow found the composure to go on calmly eating. The spell of credulity that Xiao Lang had woven over Fearful Feng and his men seemed to subside a bit, and the merchant was looking less terrified and more truculent with every passing moment.

Kurogane kept an eye on him, but was also watching the door; so he was the first one to react as the door swung open and the guards returned, escorting a young woman between them. The two burly guards - neither of them hired for their brains - were keeping as far away from her as possible, and both stared intently at the ceiling rather than letting their gazes cross hers.

This was the first time Kurogane had gotten a look at Xiao Lang's lady-love, and he had to admit that the kid didn't have half bad taste. She was a lovely girl, slender and smooth-skinned, with curtains of shining black hair. She also had, right now, a stormy scowl on her face - and her lovely slanted eyes, just as Xiao Lang had so ominously foretold, were a distinctive and unusual shade of red. Her angry glare wavered around the room, apparently unsure whether to settle on Xiao Lang or Fearful Feng, but Kurogane reacted first.

He jumped to his feet and drew his sword, leveling it at the petite girl and backing away several steps as he roared in mock anger. He didn't have Xiao Lang or Fai's knack for making up gibberish and making it sound convincing, but when an armed swordsman reacted in obvious fury and fear from something, people tended to look around for the threat.

The guards jumped like rabbits at Kurogane's reaction; they drew protectively close around Feng's chair, but wavered in uncertainty as to whether they were supposed to be attacking Kurogane or Mei Ling. Fai jumped to his feet, waving a bamboo skewer like a weapon as he, too, pointed at Mei Ling and babbled frightened-sounding nonsense.

"Master Feng, I fear that all our suspicions were confirmed!" Xiao Lang exclaimed. "We are in the very presence of a moon fairy, the most insidious and deadly of all spirits! You must get rid of it at once! Remove it from this house before it poisons everyone living here!"

So convincing was his passion that several of the guards started towards the girl before a reedy voice penetrated above the furor. "Wait!" Fearful Feng stood up, pushing his seat back, and the guards stopped their advance and looked at him.

"This is all going by a little fast," Fearful Feng said, his expression regaining some skepticism. "I mean - maybe she's a moon fairy, and maybe she isn't. But I see no reason to believe that she could possibly be as deadly as you claim."

"Master Feng, I assure you that the dangers of moon fairy magic are well documented!" Xiao Lang said in a shocked voice.

"Maybe, but she's been in this household for months now, and no one is dead yet," Feng countered. "Even I have only begun feeling ill in the last few days. Maybe the creatures aren't as powerful as legends make them out to be. If not, it might enhance my prestige and power to have one of them under my roof, eh?"

Impatiently, Kurogane wondered why they didn't just kill him now and be done with it. But Fai and Xiao Lang had allowed for this possibility in their ridiculously convoluted plans, so he stuck to the plan for the time being.

Xiao Lang gave a resigned shrug, and then he took a deep breath and bowed formally towards the merchant. "Master Feng, we have been invited into your home as guests," he said. "As such, we owe it to you to do all we possibly can to safeguard your health against a frightful and deadly menace. If that requires proof, then so be it."

Feng's face lost some of his certainty. "What - what are you going to do?" he said hesitantly.

Xiao Lang and Fai held another extended conversation with Fai in the made-up language - all gibberish, since the two of them had worked out their roles long before they had even set foot in this house. At last Xiao Lang turned back towards the merchant, while Fai stood up and beckoned imperiously to Sakura, who had been sitting by the wall during this whole production with wide eyes.

Fai spoke a nonsense phrase in an imperious, commanding tone, and hesitantly Sakura stood up and walked over to her. Considering the princess' honest and straightforward nature, they'd attempted to keep her part in this performance to a minimum; but this was something that only she, and none of the others, could pull off.

"Wh-what are you planning?" Feng said, growing increasingly agitated now that his attempt to call their bluff seemed to be backfiring.

"For your own health and safety, it is absolutely critical that we prove to you how dangerous this creature is," Xiao Lang said gravely. "Of course, we would not dream of endangering your exalted self, nor any of the honorable members of your household. Fortunately, this is only a servant girl, of no education and little worth. She will serve well enough for a demonstration of this wicked fairy's true nature."

Everyone in the dining chamber held their breath as Sakura and Mei Ling advanced towards each other. They stopped in the open center of the room and regarded one another warily, two girls completely alien to each other in culture and appearance.

"Moon fairy, reveal your true self!" Xiao Lang thundered in a commanding voice. "Your kind was born to kill and destroy humans without mercy, so show none now! Touch this servant girl - and let your touch be swift death!"

Then Mei Ling lifted a hand, and because of the angle Kurogane was standing at - and also because he knew exactly what he was looking at - he just made out a brief glimpse of white edged with delicate black tracings before Mei Ling's slender hand touched Sakura's chest, at the base of her throat.

A high, pure tone sounded across the room, and for a moment an intense white glow filled the space between Mei Ling's sleeve and Sakura's chest. The air rippled, and the brief glimpse of white that Kurogane had seen disappeared as the feather was absorbed into Sakura's chest and vanished.

Sakura's eyes rolled back in her head, and she collapsed in a heap on the dining room floor.

Chaos erupted in the dining room, taking shape first in a mass shuffle towards the doorways or other exits of the room; Kurogane saw one ingenious waiter vaulting out the window. Only a few of the hardiest guards retained their footing; but although they drew their weapons and pointed them shakily at the supposed fairy, they kept their backs pressed firmly to the walls. The only ones who didn't move or react were Xiao Lang and Mei Ling, the latter looking somewhat panicked and startled by her own heretofore unknown power.

And if Kurogane had ever had reason to doubt that Xiao Lang and their own Syaoran shared a soul, it was watching him look down with calm disdain as Sakura lay in a still heap on the wooden floor, and not run to her side.

"It's a trick!" Fearful Feng was screaming, barely heard over the shouting and babbling voices. "It's impossible! The girl is faking it! She must be!"

Fearful Feng's steward, trembling from head to toe, edged forward in a wide circle around the two girls, prepared to leap back if the dangerous moon fairy so much as moved towards him. Mei Ling only tossed her long black hair over her shoulder and sniffed, her arms folded tightly across the chest, and the man stooped down towards Sakura.

He was up again a moment later, backing rapidly towards the wall. "Master Feng, she is not breathing, and her skin is cold and clammy!" he reported hysterically. "It's no trick! The girl is dead, struck down in a flash of uncanny light! I saw it with my own two eyes!"

"Impossible!" Feng tried to deny, but it was a weak whimper of denial now. "You people - you people…" he trailed off.

Xiao Lang stepped deliberately forward, and leaned over the table towards the terrified merchant, planting his hands firmly on the tabletop and leaning forward. "Master Feng, I'm afraid that my companions and I have not been entirely honest with you," he said.

Fearful Feng's only response to that was a strangled gargle, but Xiao Lang continued on undeterred. "As you may have guessed, my foreign companion is _not_ a doctor. Rather, he is an esteemed witch-finder, a seeker of unethical magicians and malicious spirits who seek to inflict chaos on the human world. We work in the deepest secrecy, so no doubt you have not heard of us, but rest assured that to have survived the things that we have survived, there is none more skilled or knowledgeable in the ways of evil fairies. It was the rumors of a moon fairy that drew us to your house tonight, and now that we have confirmed the truth of her presence, it is our solemn duty to remove her into custody for the proper banishment rituals."

"Whatever you say!" Fearful Feng screeched, flailing his arms as he tried to inch his chair backwards. "Just get that thing out of here! The dead girl, too. I don't want her spreading evil magics all over my house!"

"Just as you say," Xiao Lang nodded solemnly. "Now, of course, there is some discussion of the usual monetary fees for the exorcism of dangerous ghosts…"

Kurogane and Fai exchanged an incredulous glance; and without needing any prompting from their guide, decided simultaneously that it was time to retreat with their prizes. Kurogane scooped Sakura off the floor and hefted her in his arms; she  _was_ still breathing, but it was slow and shallow enough that the panicked steward could easily have missed it.

While Xiao Lang continued extracting his payment from the flabbergasted merchant, Fai produced an arcane-looking length of cord from his pockets - it was actually just fishing line twined with ivy, but it looked nicely mysterious - and wound it about Mei Ling's wrists and neck, preventing the fairy from turning into a bird and flying away before she could be properly dealt with. He kept his expression stern, but gave the young lady an outrageous wink before he led her away on the end of the leash.

All of the guards who were not clustered behind Fearful Feng's chair had fled, and Kurogane and Fai found their way out of the mansion without seeing another living soul. They were almost to the street before they heard the sound of light running footsteps behind them, and Xiao Lang rejoined then, out of breath and flushed from running.

"There you are," he said. "I give it half an hour before greed starts to overcome fear and shock and he thinks to double-check some of the facts. In the meantime, we should make ourselves scarce."

"About time!" Mei Ling said, breaking out of her silence at last. She shook her hands violently to free them from the netting, and Fai backed away laughing as she flung it to the ground and rounded on the boy. "Xiao Lang, you miserable rat! What kind of a rescue is this? I was the one who had to do half the rescuing!"

"But Mei Ling, we needed you," Xiao Lang appealed to her. "Someone had to get the feather out of his secret vault, and someone had to plant the nettle on his face so that we'd have a mysterious illness to work with!"

"And what if I'd gotten caught either time?" Mei Ling sputtered. "Imagine if he'd woken up while I was in his bedroom leaning over his face! What sort of excuse would I have had to come up with for being there? Ugh!"

"But Mei Ling, it all worked out fine, and we're rid of him now," Xiao Lang wheedled. "And we've got a fair amount of money to boot, we can be married and buy our own house…"

Mei Ling's face reddened, and she stamped her foot. "You insensitive dolt!" she stormed. "When did I ever agree to any of this? Ha! That money should be all mine, for what I've been through in the past few months!"

"He'll catch on eventually, you know," Kurogane said, breaking into the lover's quarrel before Mei Ling hauled off and slapped the boy. "Even if he didn't recognize you as her childhood friend this time, he's sure to guess something is up when he sees you two running around town."

"Oh, I wouldn't worry too much about Feng," Xiao Lang said with a razor-sharp smile. "While we were enjoying his hospitality, I took the liberty of planting a few incriminating documents in his house regarding his illicit deals with foreigners in export-controlled goods. A quick visit to the guardhouse to drop off an anonymous tip, and we won't have to worry about Pawnbroker Feng ever again."

"Wow! You sure have had a busy night," Fai said, looking at the young man with an admiring respect. "Forgery, confidence scams, burglary, extortion, and now manufacturing evidence for a frame job as well? Li Kao was right when he told us you were the best man for the job."

"The royal guard cares little for slavery or murder, but they look rather sternly on merchants who try to cheat the Son of Heaven out of his tax revenues," Xiao Lang said, and then he grinned. It was the first time he'd smiled since they met him, and it was rather disturbing how much he looked like Syaoran when he was happy. "What can I say? I'm a patriot."

"I thought we were getting out of here," Kurogane said grumpily, interrupting their little mutual crime admiration society. "I'll be just as happy to never see this place again."

"And besides, we need to get Sakura somewhere quiet," Fai said, his expression turning serious.

"Is she really all right?" Mei Ling wanted to know, her fury draining away in favor of concern. "I did just what you told me to do, but I didn't really expect her to just collapse like that…"

"She'll be fine," Fai said, his voice softening as he looked over at the sleeping girl in Kurogane's arms. "This always happens. She's just sleeping. And when she wakes up again, she'll be better than ever."

Suddenly, the night lit up with orange light and a wave of heat washed over them as a dull thud shook the compound. Shouts and screaming rose from the source of the distant explosion, and Kurogane leveled an exasperated look at the little thief. "Okay, you were in the dining room with us the whole time. How the hell did you do that?" he demanded.

Xiao Lang just shrugged. "A magician never reveals his tricks," he said. "Speaking of which, weren't we supposed to be running?" And he took off down the street, Mei Ling's hand held firmly in his own.

* * *

They all slept late the next morning, and Sakura awoke with the rest of them. Her periods of forced magical unconsciousness were shorter with each feather she regained, and Fai had been right; she was cheerful and vibrant, heady with the excitement of reclaiming another piece of her past.

It was just as well that Sakura had something to be happy about; because with the successful rescue of Mei Ling, Xiao Lang no longer had eyes to spare for anyone else. He practically doted on her from the moment she emerged from her room, despite her acerbic responses to his attention; it was clearly a long-established pattern between them, and despite her prickly attitude, she almost glowed in his presence.

With Sakura's feather reclaimed, they were free to move on to the next world. Still, Fai suggested that they should stay at least a few hours longer; it was rare to find a world as friendly and rich as this one. With the money that Xiao Lang had (grudgingly) given them as part of the haul from Fearful Feng, they had a chance to buy supplies - and more importantly, precious goods that could be traded for money in later worlds. Sakura liked the idea of being able to bring a souvenir back for Syaoran and Yuuko, and so the travelers set off towards the Hangchow market where they'd first arrived.

It was just as busy as it had been the first night, but by now Kurogane had acclimated somewhat to the busy, noisy press of people. Nevertheless, he stuck close to Sakura, even as the rest of the group split up to visit different stalls and make their purchases.

Since the two of them were left alone for the moment, Kurogane took the opportunity to step close to the princess' side. "Hey," he said, pitching his voice low so the other two couldn't hear. "Are you okay?"

Sakura looked up at him from a row of glittering combs, green eyes wide in surprise. "What do you mean, Kurogane-san?"

"Uh…" Kurogane cleared his throat and looked away, fighting the urge to fidget nervously. "Well, I know this world hasn't exactly been - easy on you," he began.

"It's not so bad," Sakura protested. "This world is very beautiful, and the people are so alive and colorful. If only I'd been born here, I'd be happy to live out my life in this world."

"Well, the problem isn't the world exactly," Kurogane allowed. "It's - to be blunt, it's the kid. Don't think I haven't noticed the rude way he treats you - I'd like to knock his head for it, but he did help us out, and it's not a good idea to alienate your guide. But still, if you're not okay -"

"It's all right, Kurogane-san," Sakura interrupted. She was smiling. "I talked it over with Fai-san the first night. He was very helpful about it."

"You did?" Kurogane said. His first reaction was surprise, and then he wondered why he was surprised. That was just the sort of thing that mothering idiot would do. "Well…"

"Li-san may act a little high-handed sometimes, but he's a good person," Sakura said. "I know he must be, because he shares the same soul as Syaoran-kun. He's a little brusque when he's under a lot of pressure, but I don't take it to heart. You can see how hard he worked to take down Pawnbroker Feng without anybody getting hurt, and how much he loves Mei Ling-sama. "

"Oh," Kurogane said. He shook his head in bewildered amazement; for all that he had traveled with Sakura for months now and knew just what kind of a person she was, sometimes her capacity for understanding and forgiveness was just  _unreal._

But that was only half the issue. "But about this girl - this Mei Ling," he said awkwardly. "Doesn't it bother you - I mean, that the kid is -"

"That he's in love with some other girl, and doesn't have the time of day for me?" Sakura finished, and her sweet smile faded. She looked away, towards the side.

"No, I don't think it does, much," she said quietly. "After all, there's no  _me_  in this world. There can't be, or else I couldn't come here in the first place. And I wouldn't want Syaoran-kun - any version of Syaoran-kun, in any world - to be lonely. I'm just glad that he has someone he cares about so very much, and that she likes him too."

"Okay," Kurogane said. "If you're sure."

"I'm sure," Sakura said with a nod.

That conversation hadn't gone at all like he'd expected, but it  _seemed_  to be resolved. He wanted to say something more, basically an offer to beat the crap out of any of her enemies, but Sakura-chan didn't  _make_ enemies, she just made friends. He settled for ruffling Sakura's hair with one hand; she giggled and ducked away. "Come on, Kurogane-san," she called, dancing ahead of him in the road. "We're going to be left behind!"

Kurogane frowned as he scanned the crowd, and realized that he'd lost sight of their other companions. "Just like him to wander off," he said under his breath, and forced his way through the press of people. "Oi! Wizard!" he called out, but his voice was lost in the noise of the crowd. "Where'd you get to?"

"He said he was just going to look at perfumes and incense," Sakura said. "He can't have gone far - he had Mokona with him."

"Well, we can still understand each other, so that's something," Kurogane acknowledged. "But he'd better not be annoying the locals, or planning more mischief with that shady kid, or - "

A flash of light color caught Kurogane's eye, and he turned to see a head of blond hair - so distinctive among this population of black and dark brown - bobbing down the street the other way. "This way, princess," Kurogane called her back, and began pushing his way through the crowd. "Wizard! Hey! Stupid idiot!"

The blond head did not turn. Sakura wriggled ahead of him, her small size allowing her to slip through the gaps in the crowd almost as well as Xiao Lang could. "Fai-san!" she called out, waving in the magician's direction. "Fai-san, over here!"

Now the other man did turn, and there was a look of surprised puzzlement on his familiar face as he saw who had been calling him. He stopped and waited as they plowed through the crowd to find him, then cocked his head to the side in puzzlement. "Can I help you?" he asked politely.

"Don't be any more of an idiot than you have to," Kurogane told him brusquely. Fai was decked out in an elaborate set of local robes; Kurogane supposed they'd be able to sell them for a good price in some later world. Then his eyes narrowed, as he took in what was missing. "Where's the pork bun?"

"Excuse me?" the blond said, looking completely bewildered. "I'm not a vendor. I believe they're selling them in the stall over by the corner -"

"No, he means Mokona!" Sakura said with a laugh. "She was with you last, Fai-san. But then you ran off."

"If you don't mind my asking, how do you know my name?" Fai asked, an edge beginning to creep into his voice. "I'm quite sure I've never seen either of you; there are so few of us foreigners in Hangchow that I know I'd remember you if I met you before. Has one of the others told you about me?"

"Mage," Kurogane growled, "this isn't funny. Just get your stuff together and let's go, we -"

He stopped as the cues began to fall into place; all the subtle wrongness of Fai's clothes, his mannerisms, his voice - Kurogane realized suddenly that this man spoke with a faint but discernable accent. He had never heard that accent in all the times that Mokona was translating Fai's native tongue, which meant -

Which meant that this man was wearing local clothes, speaking the local language, and had absolutely no idea who they were.

"He's not Fai," Kurogane said abruptly, and reached out to take hold of Sakura's shoulder. Not that he expected any harm to come to her, but still - "We need to find the magician right away."

The stranger in front of them shook his head, looking baffled. "Look, I don't know what my friends told you about me apart from my name, but I'm not a -" he began, but he cut himself off. His blue eyes widened as they fixed on something behind them, and he took a step back.

Kurogane whirled around to see another Fai - their Fai, dressed in the same familiar clothes as before - standing like a stone statue in the street, Mokona perched on his shoulder.

"Fai-san!" Sakura said with relief. "We saw this other man and thought he was you, so we -"

"Mokona, get us out of here," Fai interrupted her, and his voice was raw and harsh. " _Right now."_

Mokona sprang into the air, the jewel on her forehead glowing as the golden circle appeared beneath her feet. The stranger was just moving towards them, hand raised and mouth opening, and his eyes remained locked with Fai's until the wash of dimensional magic took them away.


	8. Castle In the Air I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An argument, and a peaceful little town.

"What," Kurogane said, "the hell was that?"

"I don't know what you're talking about, Kuro-pon," Fai said in a light voice.

"Huh?" Syaoran had been in the middle of breathlessly checking to see if Sakura was all right, when he'd been diverted by the older men's argument. He'd been in the library, patiently cataloguing books, when he'd heard the roaring rush of Mokona's dimensional magic; the wooden chair he'd been sitting in was knocked over on its side from his mad rush for the courtyard.

Sakura was just as painfully glad to see him as he evidently was to see her; the joy that lit up his face and the glow in his light brown arms was so unexpectedly familiar it struck a pang in her heart. His face lit up like that when he looked at  _her,_ no one else, and Sakura wasn't the jealous type but she'd never been so glad of that as of right now.

But it was hard to concentrate on Syaoran after what had happened in the last few moments before they'd left the last world. She looked from one older man to the other; Kurogane was glaring, his hands clenched into tight fists, and Fai had an expression of artful innocence in his face. If it weren't for the tension in his shoulders and throat when he swallowed, Sakura might have thought that nothing was wrong at all.

"What are you talking about?" Syaoran asked when neither of the two men spoke.

"Right before we left," Sakura said slowly, glancing between Kurogane and Fai. "We met a man who - who  _looked_  an awful lot like Fai, and he turned around when I called Fai's name, but… he wasn't Fai."

"He was Fai's double?" Syaoran stated the obvious conclusion, surprise written on his face. "But how is that possible? Yuuko-san said that two doubles with the same soul couldn't exist in the same world. Isn't that the whole point behind making us stay behind?"

"How should I know?" Fai said airily.

"You were in an awful hurry to get us out of there," Kurogane growled.

"Well, maybe it would have been dangerous to stay for very long?" Sakura temporized. She didn't like the heavy atmosphere between her two older companions; it frightened her a little to see them fighting, not playfully like they normally did, but with a heavy edge of menace like a thunderstorm. "Maybe nothing bad happens right away, but it  _would_  have happened if we'd stayed."

"Not damn likely," Kurogane snarled, eyes not even flicking in her direction as they bore down on Fai. "We were there for three days and nothing seemed to happen at all."

"Maybe Yuuko is wrong then," Fai snapped, and the strain was more evident in his voice this time.

"Excuse me, but no." A new voice rang out across the courtyard as Yuuko's image flickered into place along the wall, tracing the Witch's by-now familiar figure in light and shadow. She was dressed formally again, in an elaborate gown with wide pointed shoulders and her hair bound up in an intricate style, but her eyes and lips were narrow and there was no humor in her voice for a change.

"To answer your question, Kurogane, Fai," Yuuko continued, turning her attention back to the two of them, "I was not wrong. There are few other magicians who know as much about the laws of the dimensions as myself, and I have unfortunately had direct experience with this particular tragedy in the past. Two souls cannot exist in the same world at the same time; there are no exceptions."

"But, Fai-san didn't see the other person until the very last minute," Sakura objected. "Would that have made a difference?"

Yuuko shook her head. "It is not a question of distance, or seeing," she said. "The barriers between dimensions are in some ways as thin as a soap bubble, and in other ways infinitely strong. But within the boundaries of a single world and time, the same soul cannot exist twice. It is a paradox that the universe will instantly seek to undo. The death would be immediate, and irreversible."

"But," Sakura said in confusion.

"But you're not dead, wizard," Kurogane ground out. "And I'd like to know why not."

"No need to sound so disappointed, Kuro-sama," Fai teased.

"Fai," the Witch of Dimensions said, and the blond man turned quickly around to face her. "Those secrets which are not mine to give, I keep," she told him cryptically. "You are free to tell whatever stories you wish to tell, or keep whatever silences you wish to keep. But I will not have you spreading doubts or lies about  _my_ secrets. This journey is hard enough on your companions without giving them reason to doubt my knowledge, as well."

"I understand," Fai said in a subdued voice.

Yuuko turned to the rest of them, and this time she did have a smile for each of them. "Welcome back, travelers. I see you made it home from the last world in one piece. And you retrieved the feather successfully, I might take it?"

"Oh! Yes," Sakura said, gratefully reminded of their victory in the last world. She didn't remember all of it - she'd blacked out the moment the feather had touched her and woken up the next morning at the inn - but she knew without a doubt that the young Chinese thief had played a key role in reclaiming her feather. "Everything went well."

"You aren't hurt, are you?" Syaoran said anxiously.

Sakura shook her head. "No, there was no fighting at all," she said. "None of us were in danger - at least, not until the last minute, I think…"

"I'm glad to hear it," Yuuko said. "Syaoran here has been invaluable to me in helping to catalog my collection of books and manuscripts! I'm afraid they'd been badly neglected over the years; I simply never found the time to sit down and organize them all."

"She was using a  _stack_  of them to  _hold up an aquarium,"_  Syaoran said under his breath, disbelief and outrage warring at this mistreatment of old texts. Sakura giggled, then quickly stifled it.

"All of you have been quite helpful while staying over in this shop," Yuuko continued. "Feel free to stay here and rest as long as you need, but when you leave again, I have quite a collection of magical items that need to be identified. I'm looking forward to Flowright-san's company over the next few days. Enjoy!"

With that, her image flickered and vanished. Sakura blinked, trying to make sense of her last statement. Since both she and Syaoran had stayed behind in the shop once already, that meant they would have to leave either Kurogane or Fai behind when they went on to the next world. Why did Yuuko seem to be so sure it would be Fai?

She turned back towards her older companions; Kurogane was standing off to the side, as stiff and indignant as a ruffled cat. Fai was sitting on the edge of the shop's porch, elbows on his knees and head bowed. "Fai-san, are you all right?" Sakura asked him cautiously. She'd never seen the confident, happy man in a state like this before; it almost frightened her.

Fai lifted his head, and managed a smile for her. "I'm fine, Sakura-chan," he said.

"What  _did_  happen in the last world?" Syaoran wanted to know in some confusion. "If it wasn't your other self, Fai, then who was it?"

"I don't know," Fai said.

"Bullshit," Kurogane said flatly, and Fai flinched very slightly at the curse word. "You do know something."

Fai laughed. "Maa, Kuro-stubborn, it doesn't work like that," he said. "You don't get to be the one to tell me what I do and don't know!"

Kurogane looked furious. "You always weave these damn webs with words," he hissed. "But this is important, dammit! This isn't just your precious secrets any more. If that witch's words are true, then you should have died when you'd seen your doppelganger. But you didn't. Without knowing what happened, there's no way we can know if it's safe to go on to the next world or not!"

"Please, don't fight," Sakura said, almost on the verge of tears. "There's no reason to get angry, is there? I mean… nobody's hurt, and we're all here…"

The older men took a look at her face, then glared at each other, then away. "I'm sorry, Sakura-chan," Fai said quietly. "Don't worry too much about it. This has nothing to do with your quest for the feathers at all."

"Sorry," Kurogane grunted, but then turned a heated glare on Fai in the next moment. "But you still haven't answered my question!"

"I don't know what you expect me to say, Kuro-chi." Fai took a long, shaky breath, then suddenly wore a cheery smile. "Well, it's obvious, isn't it? If seeing my alter self should have killed me, but I'm still here, then clearly that person in the other world wasn't me. So it must just be someone who happened to look a lot like me, but has no relation. It's just a coincidence, that's all."

"Do you really expect us to believe that?" Kurogane said incredulously. Sakura kept her mouth shut. She  _wanted_ to believe Fai, she really did… but that stranger had looked so very much like him, and had turned around when she called out Fai… And Yuuko had told her that there was no such thing as coincidence, only  _hitsuzen._

Fai gave him a long, flat look. "I don't know what else you want me to say, Kuro-san," he said after a moment. "I'm not an expert on dimensions like Yuuko-san, but I've told you all I know."

Kurogane glared at him, then turned abruptly and stomped away. Sakura just caught the muttered "liar," as he went, but either Fai hadn't heard or pretended very well he didn't.

"Well!" Fai clapped his hands, beaming brightly at Syaoran and Sakura. "Now, unless the two of you are very tired, it's just about time to move on to the next world, now isn't it? Tell you what; since you two were such good sports about sitting out, how about I go next, hmm? I'm sure that you can manage without me!"

"All… all right," Sakura said, taken somewhat aback by his enthusiasm. She exchanged a long glance with Syaoran; how had Yuuko known what Fai was going to do?

* * *

The transition into the next world was the easiest one Sakura could remember.

Their feet touched gently to the soft and springy ground, and as the swirl of magic faded around them Sakura blinked and gasped as golden sunlight flooded in around them.

"Oh, how lovely!" she cried out without thinking; but the scene that stretched away from them was so beautiful that she couldn't help it.

They were standing in the middle of a green field, and the greenery stretched away in all directions until it folded up like a velvet skirt into hills on every side. The sky above was a brilliant crystal blue, and the sunlight beaming down on them fractured into a golden-green haze rising up at the edges of the woods. The sun-warmed air was pleasant on their skin, moved only by a gentle cool breeze.

Around and behind them, a piled stone wall marked the boundary of the field, beyond which loomed the green darkness of trees. But ahead of them the field sloped away downhill, and sharp-peaked houses poked their tiled roofs against the horizon. Where the village rose up on the slope of the other side of the basin, they made out streets paved with pale grey flagstones, and gaps between the buildings where narrow parks or plazas spread across the ground.

The scene was incredibly peaceful, almost idyllic in its beauty; the travelers almost felt like intruders just standing here. "Mokona," Syaoran said, looking down at the small white creature held carefully in his arms. "Is there a feather in this world?"

Mokona popped up, white ears twitching as she turned this way and that. "Yes, definitely," she said in a confident voice. "It's not the only big magic in this place, though - there's another one nearby, coming from the same direction as the feather. It's so strong it almost drowns the feather out, but the waves are different."

"Where are they?" Kurogane said. "The feather and this other strong magic. Are they nearby, or what?"

"Up there," Mokona said, hopping to Syaoran's shoulder and pointing one tiny paw. The three travelers turned their head to follow her, and Sakura gasped again as she saw it.

At the high end of the valley enfolding the village, just before the verdant green gave way to the bare mountain slopes of stone, hung a castle. It wasn't just seated on the high mountain slopes overlooking the town below - it actually  _floated_  in the sky, a whole island of rock and earth tapering down to hang in mid-air like a mountain turned upside-down. From this angle, they couldn't see much except for the bulk of uprooted earth, but tall graceful spires arched above the horizon, made of some shimmering white stone and capped with polished brass roofs.

"Is my feather making it do that?" Sakura said into the awestruck silence, voice hushed.

"Mokona doesn't know yet," Mokona replied.

From the edge of the floating island, a small river tipped over to pour into a beautiful crystalline waterfall, splashing into a lake below to slowly wend its way down its more mundane course through the city. That waterfall was the only connection the travelers could see between the village and the city, however; there were no stairs, or ladders, or any other way of getting from the ground to the sky.

"Well," Syaoran said, and he cleared his throat. "We aren't getting any closer just standing here. Let's go down to the village and see if the people there are friendly to strangers. Maybe they can help us get up into the castle."

"Assuming that the castle and the village are friendly," Kurogane pointed out quellingly. "People don't uproot castles for no good reason - it must take a huge amount of magic to keep it going. Hanging your castle in mid-air would be a damn good way of protecting it from assault from the ground, don't you think?"

"Oh, surely not," Sakura protested. "I can't imagine that they're at war; there's no walls or weapons or anything in sight, is there? Besides, this place just feels so… peaceful."

Kurogane made a disagreeing noise, but didn't argue.

It was a short hike from the field where they'd landed into the village. Long grasses crunched under their feet as they walked; the field was clearly meant for farming, its straight lines and stone-lined boundaries betraying its man-made origin, but it was completely covered now with wildflowers and meadow grass. All the greenery was a little overwhelming to Sakura, who had been brought up - at least what she could remember of it - in a desert country. The field seemed a little wild and overgrown to her, but perhaps it had been left fallow this year; after all, plants would grow faster in such a lush, beautiful climate as this one.

They hadn't encountered any of the villagers by the time they crossed the boundary of the field into the village green, the wide common-held area where livestock would normally graze and children play. The sunlight hovered silent and golden over the flagstone streets, and the sound of their boots echoing between the buildings was the only sound in the still air.

The buildings were fascinating and beautiful, unlike any she had seen before; the walls were made of some whitewashed wood or plaster, strapped vertically and diagonally with black-stained beams of wood. The pattern of supports made a beautiful geometric design, and the tall pointed tile roofs that capped them just added to the sense of quaint coziness. Many of the buildings were two stories tall, and some of the second-story windows had flower boxes in them, spilling over with green stems and colorful profusion. But they still had yet to see any people, and Sakura's puzzlement grew with every empty street they crossed.

At last they fetched up in one of the town squares, a pattern of black and white tiles more or less at the center of the village - it really wasn't a very  _big_ village, but they ought to have seen  _someone._ "Hello?" Syaoran called out, and his voice rang back from the rooftops. "Is anyone here?"'

"It's abandoned," Sakura said, feeling a crushing sense of disappointment. She had so wanted to meet the people of this beautiful village, to talk to them and get to know them. But they had all gone, it seemed, before the travelers ever set foot here.

"Yes, but why?" Syaoran's face mirrored his puzzlement. "There's no sign of an invasion or a siege, and the land around here is perfectly fertile. Why would they abandon such a clearly rich and thriving town?"

"Search the houses," Kurogane dictated. "Don't go out of earshot, but see if you can find any sign of where they all went. Keep an eye out for anything that looks like it might be connected with the castle - remember, that's our real goal here."

Syaoran nodded, and the three of them split up; somewhat reluctantly, Sakura trailed behind Syaoran as he headed towards one of the silent houses.

The door was not locked; it was a little stuck in its frame, but with a little bit of effort Syaoran forced it open. "Hello?" Sakura called as they peered together into the hallway; she didn't really expect an answer, but it just felt wrong to barge into somebody's house uninvited without at least announcing themselves.

"Look at this," Syaoran said as he moved forward, his footsteps muffled as he stepped into the house. "This is the dining room. The table is set, but there's no food."

As Sakura stepped after him she realized why his footsteps had been muffled; the floor was covered with a layer of dust, inches thick. Their movements had stirred up some of it, and Sakura sneezed explosively.

"There's dust everywhere!" she exclaimed. She looked up and sniffed heavily, staring around the corners and ceiling joints. "But no cobwebs! I'm a little bit surprised."

Syaoran turned to her with an oddly intend expression, head cocked slightly to the side. "Listen," he said.

Sakura stood still for a moment, holding her breath as she strained to hear whatever Syaoran had. "I don't hear anything," she said at last, letting out her breath in a gust.

"That's the point. There's nothing to hear," Syaoran said. "No dogs barking, no birds, no insects… nothing moving at all. There's not even the tracks of rats or mice to break up all this dust," he added, scuffing it some of it with his toes.

"Maybe they took their animals with them when they left?" Sakura guessed.

"They wouldn't have taken rats and spiders," Syaoran said, shaking his head. "It's just very strange, that's all. Every world is a little different, but I've never seen one that didn't have any kind of bugs or rodents at all."

"I wonder where they all went," Sakura said half to herself. Syaoran shrugged and turned away, intently examining the fixtures in the kitchen. In the back of the house, a shadowed staircase led upwards to the second story; Sakura hesitated for a moment, but there had been no sign of danger so far, and besides, Syaoran was just a few yards away. "I'm going to check upstairs," she announced before heading to the stairs.

The upstairs proved to contain the bedrooms; one large one with a double bed, completely empty, and another smaller one with a child-sized bed. Sakura moved into the smaller bedroom, staring around at the faded colors of the wallpaper and the scattered detritus of children's toys. Just like Syaoran had said, some things were the same in any world; this bedroom had obviously belonged to a little girl. She could easily imagine the little girl who lived in here, sleeping under the patterned quilt in the cot or playing with the toys.

The ceiling sloped down here, following the sharp arch of the roof; a little door, half the size of the normal ones, led to a tiny closet. Suddenly curious, Sakura pulled the door open, and then screamed.

By the time she recovered herself, Syaoran was already at her side, urgently asking if she was all right. Sakura heaved a deep breath, regardless of the dust; her hands and face were full of sharp pins and needles, and her eyes were riveted on the shape of the tiny skeleton curled on the floor of the closet. The flesh had long ago faded away, but the bones were still draped about with the remains of a faded pastel dress. Inches away from the skeletal hand, almost buried in dust, was a forlorn wooden doll.

"Oh, Syaoran…" Tears were streaming down her face, and she clung to Syaoran's shoulders. She didn't resist when he turned her face gently away, but as she sniffled and pressed her face into his shoulder she could still see the image burned into her mind.

"What happened?" Kurogane's familiar voice filled the hallway, and Sakura spared a moment to be amazed at how fast he had gotten here after he heard her scream.

"It's a body," Syaoran told him, not letting go of Sakura's shoulders. "A… young one, probably a little girl. She's been here for a long time, though. I don't know what happened to her."

Kurogane grunted and entered the room; he had to kneel down to fit under the sloping roof by the closet door. His keen red eyes narrowed as they pierced the gloom, and he reached out one hand with surprising gentleness to nudge the tattered cloth aside. "No sign of injuries or violence," he reported. "Looks like she was holding the doll as she died; hard to tell if she was playing, or just holding it for comfort. No way to tell at this point what killed her."

"Could it have been a plague?" Syaoran asked with just a hint of fear. "Are we safe here?"

Kurogane shook his head, then shrugged as he stood up. "As old as this body is, it wouldn't still be contagious," he said. "If it was plague, though, I'd expect there to be more bodies. Even if her family cleared out to get away from the plague, I'm surprised they wouldn't take their daughter's body along, or at least give her a burial or cremation."

"She was so young," Sakura whispered into Syaoran's shoulder, and there was a moment of uncomfortable silence as the men shifted. Suddenly she wished Fai were there, so that he could give her one of his gentle hugs and murmur something soothing in the way he always had.

"Princess," Syaoran said in a gentle voice, hesitantly rubbing her back. "It - it was a long time ago. There's nothing we could have done."

"That doesn't mean it isn't still sad," Sakura countered, and pulled away from Syaoran to head for the door. She didn't want to be in this room any more, in this sad deserted house with its last lonely young occupant.

As the sun sloped westward in the brilliant sky, they searched the rest of the village - some of the buildings were large, others small, but all echoingly empty. They found no more bodies, of any age or size, and Sakura wasn't sure whether to be glad or sorry about that. She was glad that no one else had died, but it also made her sad in some ways to think that even in death, the little girl was all alone.

"Princess," Syaoran said in a low tone, and he came over and touched her shoulder. "I don't mean to disturb you, but… I mean, I just want to ask… have you  _seen_  anything?" He made a little gesture in the air, and looked at her helplessly. "From the people who used to live here, I mean?"

Sakura thought about the question. Ever since she was a small child she'd sometimes been able to see and speak to departed spirits. In Jade Country, Princess Emerald had lingered near the ruins of her castle home for centuries, worried for the fate of the children should the terrible disease come again. If such a disaster had struck this town, there might be some lingering shade, but… "No," she said, and shook her head. "I haven't seen anyone, or heard anything. All I feel from this place is - well -  _peace_. If we hadn't found that body, I wouldn't have thought anything was wrong at all…" She trailed off.

"We're not learning anything new down here," Kurogane said brusquely as he rejoined them. "We've got to find some way to get up to that castle and see what's up there. If your feather is up there, Princess, it might hold the key to this whole mystery."

"But how?" Syaoran asked. "There's no way up there."

Kurogane shrugged. "First thing to do is get as close as we can, and see," he said. "If we have to, we can take apart some of the building materials from these houses and try to build a turret to reach it. It would take a while, but nobody's using these buildings any more."

Syaoran looked doubtful, or maybe that was just his expression at the thought of dismantling all these beautiful buildings. "Let's go and see first," he said.

They set out across the silent village towards the castle, floating at the top of the valley. They were all a lot more wary, now, than they had been when they first arrived; whatever had happened to this village, it was impossible to think that the castle wasn't somehow related. Sakura couldn't help but worry; had her feather somehow caused this? She hated to think that her feathers could cause such silent sorrow… but they had, in the past, when the wrong people got hold of them.

They hiked up the last slope towards the castle, and then paused a moment at the crest of the hill. From this angle they could see little except the underside of the floating hill, only the tallest of the silent spires peeking over the edge.

"Mokona, is there any way you can help us get up there?" Syaoran asked. The little creature shook her head woefully.

"None of Mokona's techniques would work for this," she said. "It's just too high. We'd have to ask Yuuko for help."

"I'll be damned if I ask that witch for anything," Kurogane growled. "It figures that skinny bastard mage wouldn't be here just when we need him. He's the one who knows the most about this magic stuff."

Suddenly a light burst from the spires of the castle, a blindingly bright blue-white light. It accompanied a tremendous noise like the ringing of a bell, and each of the travelers clapped their hands over their ears as Sakura cried out.

The noise ceased, and as the travelers stared stunned, a glowing shape appeared at the edge of the island. A pale sheet of light descended towards them; at first Sakura thought it was another waterfall, but as it unfolded and unfolded she realized it was actually a pale, translucent staircase. The glowing blue light followed the edge of the staircase as it descended, and the closer it got to ground level the more it resolved into the figure of a human being.

"This is it!" Mokona piped up, barely audible over the ringing echoes of the noise from before. "That's the source of the big magic Mokona sensed earlier!"

The shimmering staircase curved gracefully in mid-air, and continued unfolding until the final step spread out along the ground only a few yards away from them. The light shifted as it rounded the bends of the staircase, and as it came around the final curve they realized it was being held like a lantern in the hand of a tall figure walking down the staircase towards them.

At first they were unsure if the stranger walking towards them was a man or a woman; it was tall and slim, but a long braid of blond hair fell down its back and twitched with every step, the trailing end nearly brushing against the ground. The stranger was wearing blue, richly-cut clothes with ornate decoration around the clasps of the tunic, belt and gloves, and it was the style of the trousers and the thigh-cut boots that finally clued them in that their visitor was a man.

And then he raised the light to illuminate his face, and he wasn't a stranger at all. Fai's familiar face smiled radiantly at them, and Fai's bright blue eyes shone out with an unearthly twinkle.

"Travelers!" the stranger exclaimed happily. "I'm so happy you've come! Oh yes, I am! Please forgive me for my lack of hospitality until now; it's been so long since anyone has come this way that I simply wasn't expecting you. Please, do come up to the castle and make yourselves at home!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Notes: If you're wondering why Kurogane gave up on getting an answer from Fai so quickly, it's because he didn't want to have that argument in front of the kids. When I went back through the series, I realized that all the times Kurogane confronts Fai about his secrets - in Outo, in Piffle, in Shara, and in Tokyo - it's when they're alone together. I don't know whether it's because he doesn't want to disturb the harmony of the group, or he figures Fai would be more truthful without an audience, or both. Trust me, he's just waiting for a chance to get Fai alone before he presses him for an answer.


	9. Castle In the Air II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The travelers are made welcome. Oh yes, very welcome.

The sun was sinking fast as they climbed the translucent staircase behind their host, and Sakura was glad for the ball of light he still balanced in one hand. It was also better not to look down, or to either side; although the stairs  _felt_  solid and just slightly rough, like wood or stone, it was dizzying to look down and see the shadows of the ground far below her feet.

She sought distraction by turning her attention to their host, instead. It might have been the light, but it looked like his hair was a darker gold than Fai's had been, his skin a little more ruddy, his eyes a deeper blue. But they had the same bright sparkle as the Fai she knew, and his mouth dimpled when he smiled; she found herself almost mesmerized by the bounce of his impossibly long braid as he easily climbed the stairs.

It was on the tip of her tongue to ask him about the poor little girl she'd found in the village below; he was the only living person they'd found so far, so maybe he knew something… It didn't seem like the right time or place to ask, however; they'd only just met, and she didn't want to be rude. Besides, he'd been so friendly to them; and as she usually did, she wanted to make friends.

"My name is Sakura," she ventured. "Where I come from, that's a kind of flowering tree. What's yours?"

The blond man swung about, a surprised look on his face as he continued walking up the stairs backwards. "Oh, do forgive me," he said. "Where are my manners? I am Wizard Fane. Yes, that's me. That's a name from the old language, and it means 'happy' or 'joyous.' " He laughed. "Appropriate, isn't it?"

"Oh, yes!" Sakura said. Privately, she marveled at the coincidence; even being born in completely different worlds from each other, both the Fai of this world and the Syaoran they had met in China had names that were very similar to the people she knew. Or was it more than a coincidence? None of them fully understood how Mokona's magical translating ability worked, so perhaps that had something to do with it.

"Sakura. Yes. A lovely name for a lovely girl," Fane said. "And who are your handsome companions?" He gave the tall ninja a wink so like what Fai might have done that Sakura marveled, and Kurogane scowled and looked away without answering.

"This is my - my  _friend,_ Syaoran. My best friend," she said a little defiantly, but Syaoran only smiled at her and made no protest. "And this is Kurogane-san. He looks after us."

"It's a pleasure to meet you both!" Fane said, and sounded like he meant it. "What about this little one, here? I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like you before." He looked directly at Mokona, aiming a friendly smile towards her. Sakura and Syaoran exchanged a startled glance. Mokona had been playing the part of an inanimate object, as she usually did when they first came to a world and weren't sure yet whether it was safe for her to reveal herself. It was very rare for anyone to realize at first glance that Mokona was more than the stuffed doll she resembled.

But then again, this Fane  _was_  a wizard…

"Mokona is Mokona!" the little creature piped up, ears tilting as she hopped forward in Syaoran's arms towards Fane. "There's only one other Mokona in existence, and the black one isn't in this world. Mokona is very special!"

"I'll bet you are," Fane laughed. "Well. It's delightful to meet you all! Yes, so delightful. I hope you'll be happy in castle; I do apologize for making you climb such a long way when you must be very tired already from traveling. Visitors come by so seldom, and it's very convenient in a lot of other ways to have it up here."

"You were the one who made the castle fly, Fane-san?" Syaoran asked eagerly. The wizard nodded.

"I did," he said, "although I wouldn't call this  _flying,_  exactly. It pretty much stays in this one spot, and doesn't put out much of a drain on the local field this way. In order to make it move I'd have to play pretty havoc with all the ley line linkages, and even then it would be more of a 'float' than a 'fly.' Indeed, yes. But I won't bore you with the details."

They were reaching the top of the shimmering staircase at last; the sun had gone almost completely behind the horizon, and only the highest tips of the mountains and the undersides of the clouds. As Sakura stepped up above the rim of the floating ( _not_  flying) island, she gasped.

All of the details of the castle which had been hidden from view by the angle of the floating rock spread out before them now. There were indeed the soaring spires whose tips she'd seen poking above the horizon, their brass caps burning a rich red in the setting sunlight. The castle was actually half a dozen smaller buildings, all built of the same white marble and flying red and violet pennants, surrounding the main central keep.

The grand keep towered several stories above the ground, with round towers at each of the corners rearing up even higher and ending in cone-peaked spires. The evening sunlight washed the snowy white stone walls in gold and rose, and stained-glass windows set into the walls at regular intervals glowed with a riot of colors. Three wings of the castle surrounded an open courtyard filled with beautifully manicured trees and flowers, and the gleaming brass gates were flung wide in welcome.

It looked like a castle out of a fairy tale, every fairy tale, the wishful dreaming of any child's fantasy. Sakura suddenly couldn't wait to get inside and see the rest of it, to see what those beautiful stained glass windows looked like from the inside.

"Do you like it?" Fane's voice said from behind them.

"It's beautiful!" Sakura squealed, embarrassed at sounding like a six-year old but unable to help it.

"It's amazing," Syaoran agreed in awed tone.

"It's the worst castle ever," Kurogane said disapprovingly. "A single warrior with a slingshot could probably storm this place; there's no defenses at all. What's the point of a castle if you can't even close the gates, or can shoot arrows right through the windows?"

"Oh my, so practical," Fane laughed. "Well, that  _is_  one of the reasons it's a thousand feet off the ground, Sir Kurogane."

"Why? Are you expecting trouble?" Kurogane asked with interest. Sakura tried to suppress a sigh; how very like Kurogane, to instantly seize on the possible topic of war.

"Not particularly," Fane replied to Kurogane's evident disappointment. "But it never hurts to be prepared, don't you think? Oh yes. Let's go inside; we're losing the light, and it does get chilly up here after dark. Come along, this way…"

The inside of the castle did not fail to live up to the outside. They stepped through the broad gilded doors into a magnificently large hallway. Graceful arches held up the high ceiling, their fluted columns decorated with elaborate carved friezes. The floor itself was shining polished tile, with a thick red carpet so plush their feet actually sank into it by half an inch.

Fane raised his hand, and the ball of magical light he'd been holding flew across the space to alight and kindle in glass lamps set in filigreed sconces on the wall. The light grew quickly into a glittering dazzle that reflected from high chandeliers and tall mirrored panels set between the arches. Sakura caught her breath; there were a  _lot_  of mirrors in the hallway, crystalline panels that reflected the golden magical light a hundredfold. Red velvet curtains with gold-braided cords flanked each of the mirrors, giving the hallway a warm and cozy look.

"Welcome to my home," Fane said, smiling. "I'll give you a tour in the morning; but for now, you must be tired, traveling all day to reach this place. Yes, you must be very tired. I'll show you each to your quarters, and - "

"We'll stay together," Kurogane interrupted him.

Fane's light-colored eyebrows lifted in surprise. "That's really not necessary," he said. "We have plenty of rooms. Yes, we do. You can choose any you like. Surely the lady needs her privacy?"

"Um… that's all right," Sakura said hesitantly, casting a puzzled look over at Kurogane. "We're used to all camping out together. I don't mind."

"Are you sure?" Syaoran said in an undertone, shooting her a worried look. "I'm sure it would be all right if we got rooms right next to each other, and -"

"We stay together," Kurogane repeated, in a tone that brooked no argument.

Fane shrugged easily. "Well, you are the guests, so what you say goes," he said. He turned down a second hallway, somewhat smaller but just as richly appointed as the first, and beckoned the travelers to follow. "I'll set you up in our largest guest suite, then, and have the servants bring you some food. Yes. You must be hungry."

"Servants?" Sakura said eagerly, craning her head to look around them. The walls of this hallway were lined with mirrors too, giving her a dizzying image of their party reflect dozens of times into the distance between the velvet curtains. "Oh, there are other people here?" Perhaps Kurogane had been right after all about why the castle had been raised into the air. If something had happened to the town below, maybe all of the people had fled to the castle and lived in safety here…

Her thoughts broke off at the sound of Fane's laughter. "Oh, no," the blond man said, spreading his arms wide and smiling. "No, not at all.  _These_  are my servants."

There was a rushing sound, and then the air around them was filled with dozens of fluttering wings, swooping in wild circles around Fane. The light patter of footsteps followed in their wake, and from a side corridor came trotting a dozen small, hoofed animals, none of them taller than Sakura's waist.

The air was full of a dizzying profusion of brightly colored wings, and it was hard for Sakura to get a good look at their owners; one of the flying creatures flashed by Sakura's face, and she got a glimpse of a bat-like creature with brilliant butterfly wings. A tiny horse, its hide and mane a soft blue and with a pearlescent horn extending from its forehead, nudged against her hand hopefully, and Sakura couldn't help a delighted laugh as she patted its soft head.

Mokona gave a happy cry as she saw the little creatures. "Wow!" she said enthusiastically. "It's like a magical zoo!"

"Are all these animals native to this world, Wizard Fane?" Syaoran said in astonishment, craning his neck to try to look at all the different winged beasts. "Or did you create them?"

"I did," Fane said, smiling with a certain amount of pride. "They aren't just pets - they're quite clever and useful as well, you'll see. Yes, they are. Come along, your room is just at the end of this hallway!"

"I hope you will be happy in here," Fane said, as he swung open a tall mirrored door to reveal an elegant bedchamber beyond. Somehow, a fire was already crackling in the marble fireplace over by one wall; the light glittered off the colored glass window that kept out the night air. A huge bed dominated the room, but the heavily carpeted floorspace was scattered with low couches and armchairs, as well as a heavy dark wooden dining table and several chairs set around it. Mirror panels spaced along each wall here as well, making the room look much larger than it actually was.

"This looks lovely," Sakura said, remembering to thank her host. "Thank you."

"I'll leave you for the night," Fane said, "and send some of the servants around with food in a little while. Yes, you must be hungry. I hope to see you next morning so that we can discuss the details of your lodgings in greater comfort."

"Of course," Syaoran said courteously. "You seem very wise and learned. I'm sure you would be able to help us with our quest."

"I hope so!" Fane said, and looked towards the last member of their party. Kurogane steadfastly ignored the exchange of pleasantries, inspecting the window casings. "Sir Kurogane, we're a thousand feet in the air," Fane said with a smile. "I assure you, nothing's going to jump out at you through it. No, it will not!"

"I'd be more worried about a bird hitting it," Kurogane said, turning around with a snort, and Sakura had to suppress another sigh. She did love Kurogane and she was very happy he was who he was, but there were some times she really could wish he could at least  _pretend_  to be polite.

"Well, I wish you all a pleasant evening," Fane said, and couldn't resist throwing Kurogane a devilish grin and a wink, " _especially_  pleasant in your case, Sir Knight. Oh yes. Sleep well!"

With that he turned and walked out, closing the door behind him; the mirrored panels shivered slightly as the door clicked solidly closed.

"Kurogane-san, why did you insist that we should stay together?" Sakura wanted to know once they were alone."

Kurogane frowned, walking from one of the broad windowsills to the other. He didn't answer right away.

"We still don't know much about this world, Princess," Syaoran said to her. "It's not a bad idea to be cautious. We've been separated before when we slept in separate rooms, even when we were right on the other side of this wall. Remember Spirit?"

Sakura shivered at the memory, the winter-frozen world with the heavy fall of snow; it was her own fault for going out without even stopping to put her shoes on, she knew, but she had been confused at the time and the bone-deep cold of the experience stayed with her. "I guess so," she said.

"Don't forget, we still don't know what happened to cause the town to be abandoned," Syaoran said. "It's possible that Wizard Fane might know something about it."

"Oh, but you don't think he could have anything to do with it, do you?" Sakura protested immediately. Despite his rather odd manner of speaking, Fane had been nothing but pleasant and considerate of them. "Surely not!"

"He's hiding something," Kurogane declared with a firm certainty. "All those smiles are covering up for something. I don't know what it is yet, but I don't trust him."

Sakura sank down onto one of the couches with an unhappy frown. "But he has the same soul as Fai-san, doesn't he?" she said after a moment. "So he can't be a bad person, no matter what. And he's been nothing but kind to us."

"Mokona can tell that Fane is not happy about something," the little critter popped up, showing her usual startling insight into people's hearts. "But Mokona doesn't think he's a bad man."

Kurogane frowned more and crossed his arms over his chest, not arguing, but obviously not willing to accept reassurances that easily.

"In the morning we'll look around this place," Syaoran said. "We'll find out what happened to the town. If -"

He was interrupted by a knock on the doors, snaring all their attention. Kurogane strode forward, hand on the hilt of his sword, and opened the door a cautious crack. The next moment he was almost bowled over by a parade of animals flooding into the rooms, bearing cups and platters and napkins on their backs, hands and mouths.

"What the -" Kurogane exclaimed, and Syaoran and Sakura watched with wide-eyed astonishment as the animals set purposefully about the big table. There were more of the miniature ponies carrying special saddles strapped to their backs loaded with plates and cutlery, and pigs whose wings carefully balanced platters above their shoulders. Tiny green monkeys swarmed up the chairs to the table, and set out the dishes and loaded them up with food.

Two bright-eyed fauns, with the lower halves of goats and with curly brown hair and beards, approached the travelers and bowed, then presented them with soft white napkins. "Thank you," Sakura said to the one closest to her; but although he looked at her curiously, he didn't answer or seem to understand. Once the meal was all laid out, the magical servants suddenly organized themselves for a retreat; bowing all the while, the fauns backed out of the room and closed the doors again behind them.

Despite the extraordinary manner of its arrival, when they seated themselves at the table the food all seemed to be normal; fresh bread and steaming stew, a sliced roast with wedges of some crisp vegetable at the side. The smell was mouthwateringly delicious, and although Kurogane looked at the whole affair with deep suspicion, they all tucked in gratefully.

"I'm sure Fane-san isn't a bad man," Sakura repeated firmly as they ate. "But it does seem like an awfully lonely life, up in this castle away from everyone. Whatever it is that's making him so unhappy, I hope we can help him with it."

* * *

The next morning dawned as beautifully as the last one; Sakura ran to the window to look out. Some of the panes of glass were clear, and through them she could see over the wall of the keep and the low bumpy roofs of the outbuildings to the edge of the floating island. The world seemed to drop away, giving a clear view of the sky over white-capped mountain peaks, and above them the rising sun illuminated white fluffy towers of clouds.

As they finished getting ready, they heard a knocking at their door; exchanging glanced, Syaoran went to answer it. One of the bushy-bearded fauns was on the other side, ivory-colored horns peeking through his hair as he bowed, and as he trotted off down the hallway he glanced back and beckoned for them to follow him.

The travelers followed their unexpected guide through long stretches of corridor, confusing Sakura thoroughly as to which route they had taken, before they fetched up in a wide dining chamber. One wall contained several long windows overlooking the mountains, and the by-now expected mirrors reflected images of blue sky and white clouds until they almost felt that they were outside. A long table with a snowy tablecloth was set with five places - even one with an extra-tall chair and tiny set of dishes for Mokona! - with steaming dishes of food already waiting for them.

The four of them had just seated themselves around the table when a flicker of motion caught Sakura's eye. She turned her head to see the image in one of the mirrors of Wizard Fane walking towards them, dressed in elegant white and silver today, his long hair caught up in a braid behind him. Sakura glanced over her shoulder, but became momentarily confused when she did not see Fane there.

She looked wildly around, trying to sort out the confusing images and reflections of the room to determine where the wizard actually was - when the man himself walked up to the boundary of the mirror and stepped through it, the glass melting around him

"Oh!" Sakura said in surprise. "How - how did you do that?"

Fane grinned at her, his footsteps now sounding normally on the floor as he approached the table. "Mirror-walking is one of my talents," he explained as he seated himself at the single vacant place. "Oh, yes it is. All of the mirrors within this castle make it very easy to get from one place to the next."

"That's incredible," Syaoran said, looking wildly impressed, and Mokona agreed.

"Oh, that's nothing," Fane said, giving them a sly wink. "You can do many amazing things with mirrors, oh yes you can. Watch this -"

He clapped his hands together, and held them palm to palm for a minute. The air seemed to fizz and hum around them, although Sakura didn't see any of the runes or glowing light she was used to seeing with Mokona's magic.

She was so busy watching Fane, she didn't notice at first the movement in the mirror at the corner of her eye. It was Kurogane's reaction that cued her in, his step back and indrawn breath as their own reflections in the mirrors began to move without them.

Sakura and Syaoran's own reflections began to spin towards them in the mirror, stepping across the floor like they were two dancers in a waltz. They melted out of the mirror in the same way Fane had, and ran on soundless footsteps over towards the table. The mirror of Sakura stepped up to Syaoran and curtseyed sweetly, while the mirror Syaoran reached out to Sakura and bowed.

His touch felt airy and insubstantial, not warm and alive, but Sakura nonetheless found herself blushing fiercely as mirror-Syaoran took her hand and kissed it formally. Then both mirror images sprang into action, dancing around the table as they served up the food. Mirror Syaoran pulled back a chair and ushered Sakura into it, then rapidly served up a dish in front of her and poured her a glass of something bubbly. Across the table, her own mirror image was doing the same for Syaoran, who was blushing twice as hot as herself.

Only two reflections had emerged from the mirror; Sakura tore her eyes away from Syaoran's image to look over at the wall. Kurogane's own reflection was sitting with his back to the room, obviously sulking, even though Kurogane himself was staring at the mirror (and at the wizard) in disbelief. Fane laughed at his incredulous expression. "Oh, my, it looks like Mirror Kurogane doesn't want to come out and play," he said. "You don't relax and enjoy yourself very often, do you, Sir Knight?"

Kurogane huffed in annoyance and turned his back on the mirror, unconsciously mimicking the reflection's own pose. His reaction just made Fane laugh all the harder, and Sakura couldn't help but giggling at the picture of injured dignity the bigger man made.

Once the food was served, the images bowed again, then smiled at the guests as they twirled together back into the mirror. Sakura watched, fascinated, as they resumed their place; then Fane clapped again and let his hands fall. Her reflection fell back into mimicking her own movements exactly, mirroring her own fascinated gaze and waving as she waved.

"You really can do amazing things with mirrors, Fane-san!" Sakura exclaimed, as she began to eat the delicious food.

"Yes, they are my specialty," Fane said with a smile. "Oh yes, they are. This castle is the perfect place to extend my studies."

"You put up all those mirrors yourself, then?" Kurogane said without looking up from his food. He was scowling at the toast and eggs, struggling to use the knife and fork to manage the slippery food. "This place seems awfully big for just one man."

Fane sighed and shook his head, placing one hand dramatically over his chest. "Alas," he said, "you have uncovered my secret. This palace was not originally my home."

"It wasn't?" Sakura said in surprise, while Syaoran nodded triumphant satisfaction.

"No." Fane shook his head, making his blond tail twitch. "The truth is that I am a traveler, a wandering mendicant just like yourselves. Many years ago, I came to this valley and found the castle and the town standing empty. I searched for a long time in every direction for the original inhabitants, but found none. And, being weary of my travels, I decided to stop my wandering journey and make this place my new home."

He spoke in a precise, almost rehearsed cadence, without any of the verbal tics he usually expressed. Finished with his tale, he gave them a cheery smile. "I'm sure you are equally weary of your long travels. I hope you will consider it your home as well."

"Oh, I see!" Sakura said, although she couldn't help but feel a little dissonance. Why was Fane going out of his way to tell them this? Just last night they had been talking about him, wondering what secrets he might be hiding; it seemed odd that now he was just volunteering them up front. "So you don't know what happened to the people who used to live here?"

"I'm afraid not," Fane replied. "Oh no. I don't know at all."

"You found this place empty and decided to just move in?" Kurogane repeated disbelievingly.

"Well, why not?" Fane said reasonably. "It was empty. It's not like the original owners needed it any more. Oh no, they didn't."

"Where did you originally come from, then?" Syaoran wanted to know.

"Oh - a country very far away from here," Fane said vaguely. "You probably wouldn't know it."

"Try us," Kurogane said, a slight edge in his voice. Sakura looked at him in some surprise; since they were from another world themselves, there was no way they would recognize the name of Fane's home country, was there?

"It's very, very far away, and it's a very tiny country, and I'm sure you wouldn't recognize the name," Fane said in a firm voice. "Not at all. Now that that's all cleared up, why don't we enjoy our breakfast? I did promise you that tour of the palace in the daylight, once we're finished here. Oh yes. It's very lovely. The sooner you get the know the castle, the happier you'll be, and I want you to be very, very happy here!"

He reached for the box he'd brought with him, and opened it to reveal a brace of rich golden apples. "I thought you might enjoy these," he said, and slid them forward onto the table between the travelers. "I picked them from the palace orchard just today. They're very delicious, and very good for your health. Oh, they really are, so very good for you. Please, try some."

Sakura wasn't really in the mood to eat any more, but Fane was their host and it would be rude to refuse him. She reached out to take one; it was soft and smooth and heavy in her palm, and it made her fingers tingle as she raised it to her lips. Fane clasped his hands together and leaned forward, watching her with a strange intensity.

Kurogane stood abruptly from his place, his chair scraping backwards over the tile. "No thanks," he said. "We're not hungry anymore." His voice was kind of funny, and Sakura shot him a quick look, trying to figure out what had prompted this refusal.

"Oh, no, I insist," Fane said, with an odd edge to his voice. Sakura looked between them, confused. What was going on here? "I really do. They're my specialty. Please do go ahead and try one. As a personal favor to me?"

"We wouldn't want to be greedy," Kurogane said through his teeth. "So - no, thanks."

For a long moment the two men locked gazes - Fane smiling broadly, Kurogane glaring, and an indefinable tension stretched between them.

"Fane-san," Sakura said hesitantly, not wanting to worsen the awkward situation, but not wanting to put this off any longer. "When we were down in the village the other day, we found… we found a little girl."

Fane tilted his head to the side, regarding her in puzzlement. "What do you mean?"

Sakura sent a pleading look to Syaoran, who set down his knife and fork and turned to face Fane, placing his palms flat on the table. "To be more precise, we found the body of a little girl," he said calmly.

All the humor faded from Fane's face, to be replaced with an expression of urgent concern. "You did? Where?"

"In - in a closet, in one of the rooms upstairs," Sakura said in a small voice.

"Oh, dear." Fane's expression was overwhelmed with sorrow, and he covered his face with both hands for a moment. Then he took a breath, lowered his hands, and gave them both a wan smile. "Thank you for telling me. I had no idea I'd missed one. Oh, dear, I had no idea at all. I'll go take care of her at once."

"What do you mean, you missed one?" Kurogane demanded, his posture tensing. "And what do you mean, 'take care of her?' "

Without answering, Fane pushed himself away from the table and took a few steps away, facing towards the windows. A couple of the jewel-eyed hummingbirds flitted about his head, but he seemed not to see them as he stared into the great blue distance.

"I wasn't entirely honest with you before," he admittedly quietly after a long moment of silence. "I wasn't - When I said that no one was here when I arrived, that wasn't quite true. The truth is - the truth is - that when I arrived here a few years ago, before I lifted the palace out of the earth, there was no one  _living_  here. Only - only - other people. All of the townspeople… all of the people in the castle had died, so many years ago."

"Died?" Mokona cried in dismay. "What happened to them?"

Fane shrugged. "Who knows?" he said. "Perhaps a plague of some kind. Who can say? It all happened so many years ago… I found them - I found them - in the streets, in the hallways, in the rocking chairs in their front rooms. I couldn't - There was nothing that I could do for them, except… to find them a better resting place."

He stretched out a long arm and pointed out the window, at the long rolling hills below covered with a green velvet sward. "There they sleep," he said in a barely audible voice. "They were - they were - there was nothing else I could do for them. It took a long time, but… I thought I had gotten them all. I must have missed this little girl because she was hidden in that closet. I thought I had gotten them all. Don't worry about it. I'll get her back with her family soon, I promise."

"That's so terrible," Sakura said, her voice wavering. She brought her hand up to her mouth and blinked as her vision went blurry with tears.

Fane turned quickly and saw her crying, and he gave her a reassuring smile. It sat a little oddly on his face. "Don't cry, little lady," he said. "These things happen. It was so long ago."

"But this means you're really all alone," Sakura realized aloud. "That's so sad. Don't you get lonely up here?"

For a moment Fane's smile crumpled, and his face twisted and writhed oddly, as though two different emotions fought for supremacy. The next moment it was gone, and his happy smile snapped back into place on his face. "Oh, no," he laughed. "I'm not alone. I have all my friends. Yes." He lifted his hand, and a swift line of birds looped about his head, the winged pigs nudging at his elbow. "And now, I have you."

"But, we can't stay," Sakura objected. "We're just travelers, passing through. We'll have to leave before long, we can't stay anyplace for more than a few days."

Once again there was that strange flicker of emotions across Fane's face - for just a moment his face was completely blank, before the smile locked in again. His hands tightened on the arms of his chair "Leave? How absurd," he said with a chuckle. "You can't leave. - Why would you want to leave? This castle and valley are just perfect, lovely places to live. I'm sure you would love to stay here as well, and not have to keep traveling onto weary toil and danger."

"Even if we wanted to stay, we can't stay for more than a few days," Syaoran spoke up. "We're on a quest - we came here looking for something. We can't stop or rest while we're still searching."

"Looking for something?" Fane sat back, his shoulders relaxing and his head tilted to the side. "Looking for something? So if you found it, you wouldn't have to journey on, would you? What exactly is it that you're looking for?"

"We're searching for a magical item," Syaoran explained earnestly. "They belonged to Lady Sakura originally, but there was an accident - a terrible accident, and they were scattered to all sorts of different places. With Mokona's help, we are searching for them, and we have reason to believe that one might have ended up here."

"It's somewhere in this castle!" Mokona piped up. "But Mokona can't be sure of where, because there's just too much magic power everywhere!"

"Well, I have quite a lot of magical items in this castle," Fane said, smiling in a puzzled sort of way. "Oh yes, I do."

"It's a feather," Sakura answered. She held out her hands to show the size of it. "About this long, and with black markings along the spine."

"Hmm." Fane tapped his finger against his lips, looking abstracted. "Now that you mention it, that does ring a bell. Yes, I remember it. I believe an item like the one you describe appearing rather abruptly over the valley some years ago." He looked quizzically at Sakura and Syaoran. "Are you sure this was the same one? It was almost ten years ago; you would have still been just children. Yes indeed, you might not even have been born at that time."

Sakura and Syaoran exchanged glances. "It's still possible that's the right one," Syaoran explained. "Some of the feathers, when they were scattered, landed in very strange places - some of them even went… even went back in time, if you understand what I mean. At least one arrived almost three hundred years before we were born."

Fane's eyebrows lifted, and Sakura could imagine what he must be thinking; that a much more likely explanation was just that they were thieves trying to steal a magic artifact that didn't belong to them. She met Fane's gaze, pleading with her eyes. "Please, Fane-san, it's very important to me. It's my memory. We've been traveling for ages in search of my lost memories. I know it's not easy to give up such a beautiful and useful thing, but…"

The wizard's expression softened, and he pushed himself back from the table. "Well," he said. "I can at least go check in the attics where I put it away. I can do that, indeed. If it is the item you are seeking, then there's no more need to talk about leaving, yes?"

"Oh, yes!" Sakura and Syaoran nodded eagerly. Fane smiled at them both and stood, turning to walk towards the nearest mirrored wall. Sakura stared in fascination as the wizard stepped casually into the glass pane without breaking his stride, saw the light flicker and flow as the mirror closed around him. Then his rapidly dwindling image was on the other side of the mirror, striding away as though down a corridor.

As soon as he was out of sight, Kurogane reached across the table and grabbed the apple out of Sakura's hand. "Don't eat it," he said harshly. To Sakura's shock, he flung the apple away towards a distant corner of the room, then slammed the box shut and shoved it away. "Don't eat anything that guy gives you."

Syaoran and Sakura both stared at Kurogane in shock. "But, why not?" he asked. "We already ate dinner last night and breakfast this morning and nothing bad happened…"

"Oh, Kurogane, I'm sure Fane-san wouldn't try to poison us or anything!" Sakura exclaimed. "I mean, why would he? He's been a perfectly good host so far!"

Kurogane shook his head, but declined to explain.

"Do you think he's really got the feather right here?" Syaoran said. "I mean, if he's willing to just give it to us, then this might prove the easiest world we've ever been to!"

"Don't plant your flag before the battle's even joined," Kurogane warned them grimly. "I don't like this. Something about this whole place is -"

Before he could explain his reasoning - assuming he was going to explain at all - Mokona suddenly leapt up onto the table, eyes flying open as her ears went stiff. "It's here!" she cried out. "The feather is coming!"

A flicker of motion just out of the corner of their eyes, and they turned as Fane stepped back into the room, a bundle of white cloth under his arms. "Well, I found it," he said. "Yes, I found it. Or at least I found what I did with it. Is this the sort of marking that was on your feather?"

He unrolled the bundle of cloth, which resolved itself in a silky rippling fall into a snowy white hooded cloak. It wasn't very long, seeming more for a child or a lady than a full-grown man, with delicate white embroidery and a gently waving fringe at the hem. Splayed out across the back, in elegant sharp black lines, was the design of Sakura's feathers, and the whole cloak gave off a soft pearly radiance.

"Mekyo!" Mokona chirped. "That's it, all right!"

"But that's -" Syaoran said in confusion. "I mean, the design is the same, but that's not -"

" _How_  is that a feather?" Kurogane demanded incredulously.

Fane laughed merrily. "Sorry about that," he said. "It was indeed a feather when I got it - and it still is, in its fundamental nature. I just… changed it a little. Oh, just a little. I simply didn't expect anyone to come calling for it, and it was so interesting that I just couldn't resist doing a few experiments with its nature."

"So it's like a magic cloak?" Sakura managed to tear her eyes away from the cloak to look back at Fane. She was torn between amazement and dismay. This had  _never_  happened before. Although various other people had captured, imprisoned, and misused her feathers in the past, none of them had ever _changed_  them before. The intrinsic magic of the feathers was so powerful that she hadn't even realized anyone  _could_  change a feather into another form.

"Of course. Yes. Would you like to try it?" Fane beckoned her forward, and with some trepidation Sakura stood while he draped the cloak over her shoulders and tugged the hood up over her head.

The cloth of the cloak was incredibly soft, and faintly warm as though someone else had just been wearing it. She felt an overwhelming sense of peace and comfort, but despite the slight tingle where the soft fibers touched her skin, it seemed in no hurry to be absorbed back into her body. She touched the hem of the cloak, then took hold of the tassels and tugged. Despite the appearance of cloth, there didn't seem to be any weave to the cloak, no loose threads to grasp to unravel it.

"Mokona has never seen anything like this before!" The white creature hopped forward, and began scratching at a panel of the cloak, ears tilted curiously to the side.

"Oh, Mokona -" Sakura said uncertainly.

"Don't worry, you can't hurt it," Fane reassured her smilingly. "Really, the feather I made it out of was an amazing thing. Truly, such an amazing thing. I'd never encountered such a concentration of protective magic before, you see. I wanted to try transforming it into a shape where it could provide that protection to the wearer."

"That flimsy little thing is supposed to provide protection?" Kurogane said dubiously.

"Oh yes," Fane said, standing back and clasping his hands, beaming at her companions. "Now, if Sir Knight here were to draw his sword and take a chop at her pretty head right now - not that I'm suggesting he  _should_ do so, of course! But if he did - why, such a blow would just bounce right off that cloak. I guarantee it."

Kurogane snorted skeptically, no doubt unwilling to slight the prowess of one of  _his_  sword blows.

"It's very beautiful," Sakura said. "Thank you, Fane-san."

"Is it all right to take it?" Syaoran said anxiously.

Fane opened his hands expansively. "If you desire it so much, then yes, it's yours," he said. "Of course. After all, it's what you were searching for, isn't it?"

"But you must have gone to so very much trouble to make it like this," Sakura said. She wondered how she could bring it up to ask him to change it back. Or maybe Yuuko would be able to do it once they got back to the Witch's shop? "And you've been so very kind, and given us so much already. Please, isn't there anything we can give you in exchange?"

"Yes, I agree with Sakura," Syaoran said, nodding his head. "After all, you can't expect to give something of great value without getting something in return.

"Well, if you insist," Fane said slowly. "There is one thing of equal value I'd be willing to accept in exchange. Oh yes. One thing."

"Keep in mind we just arrived here yesterday," Kurogane growled warningly. "We don't have all that much  _to_  give."

"Don't worry, I wouldn't ask for anything that isn't yours to give," Fane said, still smiling.

Sakura took a breath, and let the silky hem of the feather-cloak slide from her fingers. "Of course, Fane-san," she said. "For all your wonderful hospitality, and help in reclaiming the feather so quickly, we'd be happy to give you anything you want."

"Good!" Fane said, and his smile  _changed_  slightly, widening and sharpening in a way that Sakura couldn't quite identify. His blue eyes seemed to light up with an eagerness, almost a  _hunger._

He wheeled on the spot, raising his arm, and his outstretched hand came to rest pointing directly at Mokona. "That," he said. "I want  _that_."


	10. Castle In the Air III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The travelers end up taking that tour of the castle after all.

"Wizard Fane," Syaoran said into the uncertainly hovering silence. "I - I'm sorry, but we can't give you Mokona."

"You said you would give me," Fane said, still smiling. "You said you would give me anything I want."

"Yes - but -" Sakura stuttered slightly, her distress tripping over into words. "Mokona isn't a  _thing_  to be given away. Mokona is a person!"

"Mokona is a magical creation," Fane said, "the same as any of my friends. I promise you I will treat her kindly. She will be very happy here."

"I don't think you understand," Syaoran said. He was beginning to recover somewhat from the shock of the unexpected request, although his tone was still warily uncertain. "Mokona was lent to us - not  _given,_  by the Time-Space Witch. She doesn't belong to us to give away as payment."

"And besides," Sakura added in, clutching Mokona protectively close. The little white creature was looking distinctly worried. "We  _need_  Mokona. Without her, we won't be able to leave!"

"Oh, is that so?" Fane said. He sounded distinctly unconcerned. "What a terrible shame that would be."

"But we  _have_  to leave!" Syaoran exclaimed. "We have to keep on journeying to find Princess Sakura's feathers!"

"But you already have the feather," Fane said, indicating the cloak that Sakura still wore.

"The feather in  _this_  world," Mokona piped in helpfully. "There are still lots of feathers in many, many other worlds!"

There was a subtle pause, and the temperature in the dining room seemed to drop noticeably, like a cold night wind had blown off the desert. "Other worlds?" Fane said at last.

"Yeah," Kurogane spoke up for the first time. He was watching Fane with narrowed eyes. "You didn't think we came from  _this_  world, did you?"

"But - you said you were travelers," Fane said. His face was shocked, and his voice was edged with panic. "Does that mean - you don't come from outside? I thought - because you traveled here from other places, that meant - there were people in other countries - "

He seemed far more upset by this revelation than Sakura had anticipated - more so than anyone else they'd met in their journey. Was it really that strange an idea to a wizard as powerful as Fane obviously was, that there could exist other worlds and other people?

"You should already know all about people in other countries in this world," Kurogane said. "Since you claimed that you were a traveler yourself. Tell us again,  _Wizard_  Fane, what was the name of the country you said you were from?"

"I -" Fane stuttered a stop, looking lost and helpless. He held his hands out to the side, and his mouth opened, then closed. "I don't -"

"You didn't travel here from another land," Kurogane said, and his voice was strangely soft. For all that, it seemed to fill the entire dining hall. "I bet you've never left this valley in your entire life. You've been here all along. The  _whole time."_

A beat. Sakura's breath caught in her throat, and her face seemed to prickle. He couldn't mean -

"It was  _you_  who killed the people in the valley," Syaoran breathed, realization dawning.

 _"No!"_  Fane screamed, and the shout of denial rang in the vaulted ceiling of the dining chamber like the peal of a bell.  _No, no, no._ "I did not, I did not! It was  _time_ that killed them, time killed them all! I killed no one. I killed no one!"

"What do you mean?" Sakura cried out in bewilderment. She didn't want to believe this, but she didn't know what else to think. "How could time have killed them?"

Fane's eyes searched out her face and locked on, wide and blue and as bright as mirror glass. They were the same blue as her Fai's, maybe a little darker, but that wasn't what made the difference: when Fai looked at people he saw them, bright and warm and laughing and accepting.

This man - this Fai - had turned his eyes into mirrors, to shut everything out so that he saw nothing except what he wanted to see. He had made everything around him bright and shining and beautiful, so that he wouldn't have to look at the truth of the world around him. Madness, there was madness in those eyes, Sakura realized, and had been there all along, although she hadn't known what she was seeing before now.

"I was," Fane said, and he had to stop to swallow, to lick his lips before he could go on. "I was the Grand Wizard to the Queen. Oh yes, that I was. Good Queen Matalina, fairest of them all, long live the queen - the queen - she wanted me to make a spell for her, you see. A spell that would keep her and her court of nobles young and beautiful forever. Yes, beautiful forever. That was what she wanted. That was what she asked.

"I thought… I found a spell that would do it. I tested it first, tested it on me, and it worked just like the grimoire said it should. All I had to do was turn it inside out, cast it on everyone else. In the throne room, yes, in front of the whole court. She would live but never age, never die, stay young and beautiful forever and ever. That was what  _should_  have happened. That was what  _should_  have happened…"

"But what happened?" Sakura whispered in horror. "The spell…"

"Backfired," Kurogane cut in. "You lost control of it."

"Yes," Fane whispered. "Oh, yes."

"And the spell killed everyone?" Syaoran's expression was torn between horror and pity.

"Yes. No!" Fane shook his head violently, hands clutching at the dark gold strands on either side of his head. "No, it didn't! Not  _my_  spell. It put them to sleep, that was all, it put everyone to sleep. Everyone, everyone in the court, in the castle, in the village below, even me. Everyone went to sleep, and slept for years and years and years… but only I woke up."

For a moment there was only silence in the bright-lit room, broken only by the tick of the ornate grandfather clock. None of the travelers moved or spoke, none of them knowing what to say. Sakura only realized when she went to take a breath that she was crying, tears pouring out of her eyes and dropping off her cheeks. She gulped a sob, and tried to stifle it.

"Everything was so quiet," Fane said, his gaze and his voice distant. "Everyone had just stopped just where they were standing. Lain down like they were going to take a nap in the middle of the day, and… They were bones. Just bones. Time had crept up on them while they slept, a hundred years of time, and there was nothing left but bones. Even the youngest, even the littlest child had grown old in that hundred years, and old age took them away in their sleep. Everyone but me."

That was why she hadn't sensed any ghosts, Sakura realized. None of the people in the village… or the castle… had seen it coming. They'd all just fallen asleep, and peacefully slept the rest of their lives away…

"So I… I took them away, to the green hillside, where they sleep forever." He blinked and shook his head, then looked at them desperately. "But it wasn't me who killed them, don't you see? It was a hundred years of time. A hundred years! Even the youngest babe would be long gone by now. Even if I had done nothing, even if I had never lived, they would all be dead by now anyway! Don't you see? They all lived so long ago! Only I remain, lost out of my proper time, to see to the proper burials, and the funerals for each and every one… it took me a long time, a very, very long time, but there was nothing else I could do…"

"You poor fool," Kurogane said, and his voice was almost… compassionate. "You just don't get it, do you? Even if those  _people_  would have been dead, the  _town_  would have still been alive! All their children, and their children's children, would still be there in the town today. Instead, it's just you. Do you even know how far your spell went? Do you even know if anyone else is alive in this entire world? Or is it just you, all alone?"

For a moment Fane looked at him blankly, searchingly, as though Kurogane were speaking a language that Mokona couldn't translate.

Then he smiled.

The friendly, happy expression seemed to snap back over his face like a mask, like a pair of doors being closed behind his blue eyes. "But I'm not alone," he said, smiling brightly. "Because you're here. I have my lovely guests, and I'm sure that you're going to be very happy here."

He took a step forward, his hands held out in front of him, and boots scraped loudly over tile as Kurogane backed away. Syaoran grabbed Sakura's arm, pulling her behind him, as Kurogane drew his sword.

"No," he growled. "We're leaving, right away. Mokona, we've got what we came here for, now get us out of here!"

In her arms, Mokona shifted and inhaled, mouth opening wide. Sakura knew the process, knew it from a dozen worlds previous, and so she knew right away that something was wrong.

"Mokona?" she said, her voice more frightened than she would have liked.

"It won't come out!" the little creature said stridently. "The magic circle won't come out! There's too much magic here, it's stopping the circle from forming!"

"Of course," Fane said, walking towards them with a knowing smile. "We can't have our guests just running off so soon, can we? That would be rude. Oh, yes. It would be very rude."

Kurogane's breath hissed between his teeth. "Run," he said, and took several steps back along the marble-tiled floor. He turned his head partway, still keeping his eyes on Fane and his sword in his hand, and barked at them, "Run!"

They ran. The sound of Fane's laughter followed them, bouncing off the mirrored walls of the hallway behind them.

* * *

They pounded down the hallways of the floating castle, Sakura already gasping for breath. All of the corridors, lined with mirrors and velvet curtains, looked identical to her - she had no idea where they were going, and only hoped that Kurogane and Syaoran did.

Around them the walls and floor seemed to tremble, backed by a distant dull roaring as if of an earthquake - but they were a thousand feet in the air, how could there be an earthquake? "What's happening?" Sakura panted.

"Don't know," Syaoran said, almost equally out of breath. "He's doing something -"

"Save your breath for running," Kurogane snarled at them, and turned into the next cross-corridor so fast that he actually ripped up part of the carpet in his passage. "This way!"

A distant chattering sounded from the hallways far behind them, and in front of them too; and then seemingly out of nowhere poured a flood of glittering, jewel-colored winged creatures. They were Fane's magical servants, the ones who had greeted them only last night - but now their voices shrieked with fury and hate, and their claws glittered ruby and diamond as they dove in to slash and tear.

Each of the creatures was small, but there were dozens of them, and they moved so fast they were almost impossible to hit. Sakura screamed involuntarily as one of them dived at her eyes; she instinctively threw her arms up to shield her face, and felt multiple thumps of impact as their talons struck the edge of her glowing cloak and slid off. Sakura dared to peek between her hands and saw Kurogane and Syaoran swinging wildly, attempting to beat back the horde of beautiful birds.

She saw movement behind them and shouted - "Kurogane, Syaoran, behind you!" Charging down the corridors at a fast lope were the waist-high goat-men who had waited on them at dinner last night. Now their almost-human faces were twisted with fury, and each of them gripped a cruel looking meat cleaver or kitchen knife.

"Don't stop! Keep running!" Kurogane shouted, swinging forward in a great blow that sent three of the goat-men to slam against the wall and tumble to the floor - one of them toppling to the floor in two pieces. The creatures did not bleed, which ought to have made Sakura feel better but didn't.

They stumbled into a beautiful wide hall, lit with crystal chandeliers, and at last Sakura recognized where they were - the entrance hall where they had come into the castle yesterday. But where the grand, gilt-paneled double doors had stood at the end of the hall, now there was only another blank wall of shining mirrors.

"I thought this was where the door was?" Syaoran said breathlessly. He ran up to feel along the bank of mirrors at the end of the hall, as though searching for a hidden entrance.

"It  _was,_ " Kurogane snarled. "It looks like that crazy wizard can do more than tricks with mirrors."

"How do we get out, then?" Sakura cried out. Something about what Kurogane had said tickled uneasily in her memories. Tricks with mirrors…

"Find another door," Syaoran said tensely. "Or a window, or  _something_  we can use to get out of here."

Movement flickered out of the corner of her eye, something darker and denser than the brilliant butterfly wings or murderous hatchet-wielding fauns. She turned her head to stare, and Sakura turned her head to confusedly track it; but now Kurogane and Syaoran were moving again, running back the way they had come, and Sakura had no choice but to follow.

"In here!" Kurogane called out, kicking down one of the doors. It was the large bedchamber where they had spent the night, its cozy familiarity turned to horror now in this glass labyrinth. They quickly rushed to barricade the door with the heavy oak furniture. Completely winded from their terrified dash through the hallway, Sakura thumped to a seat on the floor as she caught her breath.

"Are you all right, Princess?" Syaoran asked. It seemed unfair that he should be the one to ask her that; his face and arms were bleeding from half a dozen little jagged rips inflicted by the flying creatures. But Sakura didn't have the breath to object, so she just nodded.

"Mokona, can you get us out from here?" Syaoran said tensely.

"No! The castle walls have too much magic. Mokona can't get past them!" the little creature said.

"The very minute that changes, I want you to transport us," Syaoran said. "Don't wait for one of us to ask. Just do it right away."

Mokona nodded miserably.

"Guard the door," Kurogane ordered Syaoran. "I'll get one of these windows open."

Syaoran nodded and turned his attention to the portal, while Kurogane began surveying the windows, looking for the best way out. Finally regaining her breath, Sakura looked around her. Something was bothering her, and she couldn't think what.

A flicker of movement drew her eye, and Sakura stared for a moment in blank incomprehension at the mirrored walls. It took her a moment to make the connection, what was wrong. Syaoran hadn't drawn his sword yet, concentrating on his more-reliable styles of heavy kicks and blows to fight off his enemies.

But the Syaoran in the mirror had.

"Kurogane-san…?" she said uneasily, watching all of their reflections pace down the hallway beside them. The Kurogane in the mirror turned his head to look right at her. But Kurogane hadn't.

"What is it?" Kurogane said, sounding distracted. "Damn it, these windows look on the courtyard. Fat lot of good that does us with all these damn birds flying around -"

"The mirrors," Sakura said, her throat going tight. Despite the panic creeping up on her, she didn't dare look away from the mirror. She somehow  _knew_ that if she looked away, even for an instant, they would move.

Kurogane turned to look, and then swore horribly as he scrambled towards her. "Kid! Draw your sword and defend yourself, now!" he shouted, just as Syaoran yelled out, "Kurogane-san! The mirrors!"

Because in this mirror box, they didn't each have just one reflection, Sakura realized. They had three.

The reflections emerged from the mirror with a glimmering ripple of glass, and charged across the room towards them. The mirrored Syaorans and Kuroganes had swords, but even the mirror Sakura had picked up a long-handled dagger somewhere. They moved in eerie silence, not even their footsteps making a noise on the thick plush carpet.

Syaoran and Sakura were hard pressed, fighting furiously to keep from being overwhelmed. The reflections didn't seem to have anything like their amount of skill, but they were outnumbered, and they came in headlong without the slightest regard for safety or even survival. Broken glass shards littered the floor, crunching underfoot and threatening to slice through the soles of boots and feet.

Kurogane's sword took the head off one of his reflections; it flew bloodlessly through the air and rolled to a stop at Sakura's sleep, the lips moving silently for several seconds before it dissolved into a shower of shattered glass. Sakura backed away, Mokona held tight in her arms, and didn't even realize that her back was to a mirror until a voice spoke nearly in her ear.

"You must pardon my rudeness, oh yes, you must," Fane said. "I've been a terrible host. Would you care for some refreshments?"

Sakura screamed and spun around, just as Fane himself emerged from the mirror beside her. He looked perfectly calm and composed, not a blond hair out of place in his braid and his blue and silver clothes neatly unruffled. He held in his hands the open box of golden apples, and extended it out towards her with a smile of open welcome. "You really must try these apples," he said. "Because I figured out what I did wrong, you see. Oh yes, I did."

"Get back!" Kurogane bellowed, and it was unclear whether he was talking to Syaoran or Sakura, or Fane. "I'm warning you -"

The wizard ignored him, walking forward with a calm unhurried stroll. "In order to cast the spell for immortality outside of yourself, you have to use some other object as an anchor," Fane went on, as though continuing a pleasant dinner conversation. "That's exactly what I did. One bite of these apples, and you will stay young forever. You will never age, and you will never die, and you will never stop loving me. I made sure of it, oh yes. Won't you try one? They really are delicious, you know."

Kurogane turned and lunged; Sakura flinched and jerked her hands towards her face in an instinctive attempt to cover her eyes as his sword slid neatly hilt-deep into Fane's chest. There was a splintering noise, and a spiderweb of cracks spread outwards from the wound in Fane's chest, spreading across his shoulders and arms and up over his smiling face.

"You'll stay here forever," Fane said, ignoring the sword that pierced him from front to back. "You'll be ever so happy here. I am! The weather is always perfect, the food is delicious, and in this lovely castle so high above the ground, nothing can reach you at all. I made sure of it! Whatever you're afraid of, whatever you're running from, it can never reach you here. Stay here with me and live happily ever after."

"Are you watching this, wizard? Are you listening to me now?" Kurogane snarled. "You killed everyone who would ever have loved you, whether you want to admit it or not! You can't force any of us to stay with you, and you can't force anyone to love what you've become, not with all the magic that's left in this world!"

Fane's smile disappeared in shock, and his lips parted. The cracks spread further, and Sakura realized with a blurred blink that this was just another reflection of Fane, not the wizard himself.

Then his mouth opened, and he laughed. The sound bounced and echoed from mirror to mirror as the simulacrum crumbled into pieces, and Kurogane pulled his sword free. A broad sweep of the sword was followed by a shattering roar of a dragon blast, and glass tinkled and crashed in a cacophony around them as every mirror in the room shattered under the force of the blow.

"Come on!" he roared, and Sakura and Syaoran stumbled along in his wake as broken glass pattered down all around them. The laughter still echoed through the hallways, and Sakura sobbed as she tried to raise her hands to her ears to block it out.

"Princess!" Syaoran was at her side in an instant. "What's wrong?"

Sakura shook her head, unable to stop the tears rolling down her face. "That laugh," she said, not knowing how to explain what she felt, the terrible pain and grief all held back by a crackling veneer of insanity. "It's what he does instead of screaming."

Kurogane's sword swept out again as they came to a new hallway, shattering every mirror within range before they could be made to disgorge more enemies. Razor-sharp shards flew in a deadly hail around them; they bounced and slid harmlessly off the unnatural protection of the feather-cloak, so Sakura was unhurt, but what about Kurogane and Syaoran?

"Where are we going?" Sakura cried out as they stumbled on, through an endless sea of broken, shattered glass.

"There's an exterior wall this way," Syaoran said, pointing down a side corridor. Blood dripped from his wrist and from his fingers where they clutched his sword; but none of the mirror-creatures had bled. "But there's no door!"

"There will be," Kurogane promised.

Another hallway of shattered mirrors, and then they came to a stop in front of a long, blank wall - windows at regular intervals showed brilliant blue sky outside. The beautiful birds screamed in fury as their intention was made plain, and the reflections in the mirrored wall - an endless series of reflections, from the two walls of mirrors held opposite each other - began to turn towards them.

"Get down!" Kurogane warned them, and the air around him  _burned_  as he drew back his sword.

His warning was mostly useless; there was nowhere  _to_ hide in this small, enclosed corridor. The force of the blast roared over them and then bounced against the wall back towards them again. The mirrors and curtains and gilt paneling all vanished in a white-hot fury of rage, and then the stones of the wall themselves gave way with a roar. The air filled with razor-sharp shards of glass and burning chips or rocks, and without thinking Sakura flung herself at Syaoran, wrapping her arms around his shoulder and bowing her head to cover them both with the enchanted cloak.

After a long moment the explosion finally died away, although the noise of sliding rock and pattering glass continued, and Sakura cautiously raised her head. Syaoran looked at her with his eyes wide and amazed, and Sakura suddenly felt foolish. He reached up and touched her face with one hand, and his fingers left a smudge of sticky warmth along his jaw.

"Thank you, princess," he whispered. There was no time to say anything more.

Kurogane lowered his arms; he must have had some way of shielding himself from the backlash of his explosion, because he seemed intact, although grim. "There's our door," he said.

Syaoran and Sakura stumbled forward, then Sakura jerked to a stop with a breathless gasp as she saw what lay on the other side of the hole in the wall.

This side of the castle was right up against the edge of the floating island. There was no more than two or three feet of rock ledge before the ground abruptly dropped away. A vast ocean of air unrolled beyond the gap, low-hanging clouds floating  _under_  their feet as the lifeless green velvet land unrolled beneath them.

"We can't go out there, we'll fall!" Mokona cried out, looking out over the gap.

"We can't stay here, either," Syaoran said, looking nervously up the corridor.

Something was happening to the broken glass up and down the corridor. Not a single mirror had survived the cataclysm, but some pieces remained that were larger than others. The broken panes of glass were rattling, trembling as they began to move across the ruined corridor towards each other. In each fragment of mirror they caught a glimpse of someone on the other side looking out, a flash of blue velvet and golden hair.

"Don't -" Fane's voice echoed through the hallway, bouncing weirdly back from one place to another. "Don't go -"

Even as they watched two of the pieces of broken mirror joined together, and the image appeared in the glass of an open palm splayed against the glass. "Don't - leave -  _meeeeee -"_

"Mokona!" Sakura cried, clutching the small, oh so magical creature close to her. "Can you do it?"

"Yes!" Mokona answered, its ears quivering in anxiety. "Yes, Mokona will try!"

"Then let's go!" Kurogane shouted, as the shards of glass began to move ever faster.

They jumped.

It was a long way down to the ground below; more than enough time for Mokona to inhale, to reach up in Sakura's arms and open her mouth wide. More than enough time for the glittering magical lines to appear around them, even as the air and the clouds rushed past them.

More than enough time for them to look up, as the sky and the ground began to warp around them with the dimension-bending magic, to see a young man in blue velvet and a long blond braid lean out of the shattered wall after them, eyes and mouth wide in an endless scream.


	11. Firelands I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everybody tries very hard not to talk about things.

Fai felt the approaching magic of the others' return half an hour before they actually arrived. He wasn't sure why the delay; no doubt it had something to do with the strange distortion of time between different worlds, since the transition never seemed to take that long in person. Nevertheless, that gave him time to put tea on to steep and make sandwiches, gather towels and a first-aid kit (just in case) and take them out to the courtyard to wait. He figured the tea and sandwiches, at the very least, would provide a diversion that might head off any uncomfortable questions; and after that he could probably distract them by asking about their adventures.

He sat on the edge of the wooden deck with his chin propped on his fists and watched as the sky stretched and warped, dark figures slowly coalescing within it. He'd never seen this process from the outside before - the way Mokona made transitions was quite different from how the magicians of Ceres had done it - so he wasn't quite sure what to expect, but it probably wasn't a sudden rushing roar as air blasted out of the tunnel between worlds, followed by three falling bodies hitting the pond with an almighty splash (one splash bigger than the others.)

Fai's jaw dropped and he stared in shock for several moments, long enough for Syaoran, Sakura and Kurogane to come sputtering to the surface. (And what a marvel it was that a giant like Kurogane managing to tread water his full height in the pond? Fai could have sworn it was no more than two or three feet deep up until today.) Not until he saw the little white bundle bobbing up in Sakura's clutching hands did he grab several of the towels and hurry forward.

"...in the fucking pond!" Kurogane was saying, his voice strangled and sharp with stress. "Last thing we need is getting sick from the filthy water in this place!"

"It's-it's probably for the best," Syaoran said, through a jaw that chattered. "After dropping from that high up, the water was probably the only place we could land where we wouldn't get hurt..."

"Mokona got rid of as much momentum as possible!" the little creature said stridently. "Mokona can't do everything!"

"Oh, my," Fai said, surveying his fellow travelers' condition with some concern. Apart from all being dripping wet, the three of them looked rather alarmingly bedraggled; Kurogane and Syaoran's clothes were pierced with rents, and blood was beginning to slowly leak from cuts on Syaoran's arms and Kurogane's face from where they had been rinsed off by the water. Sakura seemed unscathed, but she was wrapped in an unfamiliar white garment and clutched Mokona like a talisman. "Run into some problems, did you?"

He meant it as a joke, a way to lighten the mood and welcome them back; but instead the three of them looked quickly at him and then away. The returned travelers staggered to the edge of the pond and pulled themselves out of the water.

Fai went first to Sakura's side and wrapped one of the fluffy towels around Sakura's shoulders, rubbing one corner of it over her water-darkened hair. "Everything all right, Princess?" he asked.

In response, Sakura launched herself at him with a wail, wrapping her arms around his waist and burying her face in his chest. "Oh, Fai, it's so awful!" she sobbed. "He's all alone - he's just so lonely - and it's never going to stop! It's just going to go on for ever and ever!"

Fai looked from her tear-ravaged face, to the drooping ears of Mokona, to the averted faces and downcast gazes of his other two companions, and didn't ask.

* * *

For one awful moment Syaoran was sure that Fai was going to ask what had happened: how Syaoran and Kurogane had been injured, what had made Sakura cry so. But the blond-haired mage clapped his hands together, a bright smile on his face that made Syaoran momentarily dizzy with deja-vu, and said "So! Did you get the feather, then?"

"Um... yes!" Syaoran said, recovering after a beat. Sakura was still struggling to get her composure back after her crying jag, and his teacher was looking especially grim and forbidding even for Kurogane. "We got it - but it's..."

For a moment Syaoran hesitated, torn between two impulses. Part of him wished that they could keep the feather in its current form forever; it had protected Sakura, who had come out of the frantic escape from the floating castle without a scratch on her skin (though many on her too-tender heart.) On the other hand, the longer the feather remained in this form, the more likely it was that it could be stolen by some unscrupulous bastard - and was it really fair to keep Sakura from getting her memory back...?

The next moment, Sakura took the decision away from him when she pushed back from Fai's arms, sniffed heavily, and said "We got the feather, but it's stuck in this shape." She raised her hands and unclasped the cloak, shaking her shoulders to free it and swinging it around to hold it out towards Fai. "Is there anything you can do to put it back?"

Fai's eyebrows went up, and he took the cloak and puzzled over it. "It _is_ one of your feathers," he exclaimed. "But someone has managed to stretch the strings enough to reshape it into this form. That must have taken..." He trailed off abruptly, his brows pinching in slightly as he studied the seams of the cloak more closely. After a moment, he blinked and looked up at Sakura with a smile. "Well. Whoever did this certainly knew what they were doing, is what I mean to say."

"Yes," Sakura said with a catch in her voice. "But - does that mean it's going to be like this forever?"

Fai's expression softened. "Now, I wouldn't say that," he said. "Let me see what I can do."

As he fell to studying the cloak more carefully, sitting cross-legged on the ground and spreading the garment out on his lap like a tailor, a heavy hand fell on Syaoran's shoulder. He jumped slightly, then looked up into the face of his teacher, who jerked his chin towards the door to the shop. "Let's get cleaned up," he muttered under his breath, and Syaoran nodded and followed along.

Fai had thoughtfully brought out the first-aid supplies along with everything else, just in case; Syaoran left the sliding door partially open as Kurogane emptied the contents carelessly on the tatami mat. Through the cracked open door he watched Fai working with the feather-cloak, his expression blank and focused, and tried not to think too hard of the last few moments in the last world.

Before long the two of them had cleaned and bandaged the worst of their cuts - Kurogane had more of them than Syaoran, but then, there was more of him to have, and all evidence of the gauze and plasters quickly disappeared back under his traveling clothes. Syaoran lingered by the sliding door, watching Sakura, and when the tone of murmuring voices out in the courtyard abruptly shifted he was back outside in an instant.

Sakura was sitting up straight, staring intently at the white mass of cloth in Fai's hands, which seemed to have changed shape slightly since Syaoran last saw it - it had gone from being a distinctly hooded cloak-shape to a vague round outline of flat cloth. Now Fai reached down and plucked a single thread - from where, Syaoran couldn't tell - and pulled. The cloak abruptly shrivelled - like a dried leaf going up in flame, all at once - and all that was left was a small white glow in Fai's hands, in the triangular shape of a feather. "There we are!" Fai said triumphantly, holding it out towards Sakura with a smile. "Good as new."

"Thank you!" Sakura said heartfeltly, throwing her arms around Fai in a hug. "Oh, thank you!"

Syaoran repressed the urge to lunge forward and snatch the feather out of Fai's hands, in order to deliver it to Sakura with his own two hands. Fai had earned this one, he thought, and besides, it didn't _really_ matter which of them gave it back to her. Not really. So he just watched, feeling equal parts jealous and foolish, as Fai gently settled the feather against Sakura's chest, and it vanished with a pure tone into her heart.

"Fai-san, you're so kind to me," she whispered as her eyelids fluttered shut. "I'm sorry we had to..."

Then her voice trailed off into sleep, and Syaoran was suddenly acutely aware of Fai standing next to them. He looked up cautiously, sure now that they were alone that Fai was going to ask what Sakura had meant - why was she sorry, exactly who it was that had made the feather that way. But Fai kept his mouth shut, and just kept smiling.

They spent the remainder of that day and night in the shop, resting up after the last world and waiting for Sakura to awaken. Conversation was strained; Syaoran was reluctant to talk too much about the last world they'd visited, and Kurogane kept a grim silence. That left all the talking to Fai, who seemed similarly allergic to the elephant in the room - instead, he filled the air with a nonstop monologue about all the little chores and diversions that had passed his time in the days they'd been gone. For some reason the older man insisted on clinging to Syaoran's side like a burr, refusing to let Syaoran go anywhere within the shop on his own - or was it, that Fai refused to be left in a room alone with Kurogane and the sleeping Sakura-chan?

The next morning, though, Sakura-chan was awake again and as lively as ever, despite a certain miserable redness about her eyes. As Fai and Sakura together worked to pack up their supplies, Syaoran managed to escape Fai's presence for a few moments to talk with Kurogane.

"You sure you're ready?" Kurogane asked him once they were alone.

Syaoran blinked at him. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"You know what this means," Kurogane told him. "You, the princess, and the mage have all sat out a world. That means it's going to be my turn next for the time-out corner." He looked Syaoran straight in the eye and asked him, "And that means that any enemies you run into, you'll be the one who has to deal with it. Are you okay with this?"

"I'm glad that I won't be separated from Princess Sakura again, but..." Syaoran bit his lip. "I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little worried. Despite all you've done to try to teach me, I know I'm not anything like as strong as you."

"No, you aren't," Kurogane agreed matter-of-factly. "But you're stronger than you think you are. Most people out there, even the ones who carry weapons and think they're hot stuff, are actually crap. You already know more than enough to kick the stuffing out of them; you had all your training from before we started traveling, and you've only gotten stronger since then.

"We always knew that there might come a time when I wouldn't be there, when it would be up to you to protect everyone," Kurogane continued, his tone even and his face serious. "That was the whole reason I agreed to teach you in the first place. It's come a little sooner than I would have liked, but it doesn't matter now. I trust you to be able to do whatever it takes to protect what matters to you, and you can bet I don't say that about just anyone."

"Right," Syaoran nodded. Kurogane's words didn't actually change anything, but it made him feel a little better to hear it.

Instead of releasing Syaoran, though, Kurogane gripped his shoulder a little harder, drawing him a little further away from the main room. His voice dropped to a lower volume, a soft growl more felt than heard. "And if things get hairy, keep an eye on the wizard," he said. "He likes to pretend to be useless, but in a tight situation he's got more tricks up his sleeve than he's letting on. Watch out for him."

"Don't you mean he should be watching out for me?" Syaoran said with a smile, but Kurogane shook his head minutely and leaned down even further. His next words were spoken softly, almost in Syaoran's very ear.

"Just don't let him do anything stupid," Kurogane said, before releasing Syaoran's shoulder with a pat.

Kurogane moved off towards the interior of the shop, and almost right away Syaoran heard his and Yuuko's voice raised in argument. Kurogane was bitching that he wasn't going to labor like a common servant, and Yuuko was heaping withering scorn on lazy freeloaders who couldn't even offer to help out with the simplest tasks in exchange for free room and board.

Syaoran turned back to the garden where Sakura and Fai and Mokona waited, back in their usual traveling clothes - Fai in his white coat and Sakura in her tan desert cloak. For a moment he was struck by an overwhelming surge of protectiveness towards them, and accompanying anxiety. There were so many worlds out there, and so many things that could go wrong; without Kurogane's solid strength, how was Syaoran supposed to handle it?

"Syaoran-kun!" Sakura called to him, spotting him with a delighted smile and a wave. "Are you ready to go? Mokona thinks she's found the last world that she couldn't get to before!"

 _Sakura's feathers._ The reminder of what he searched for, of what he _had to do,_ buoyed him up. Syaoran squared his shoulders and raised his chin, stepping forward towards the others. He would do it, because he had to do it. Because he had decided that he wouldn't back down.

That was all there was to it.

* * *

No matter how many times he'd seen it, Fai couldn't help but admire the artistry of Mokona's magic.

It wasn't just that it was pretty (although it was that;) it was the _completeness_ of the illusion. Mokona enfolded them in magic, drew the fabric of reality itself in a tight twist around them, so smooth and seamless that they seemed to be falling through an endless tunnel of golden light, dropping weightlessly through rings of pulsing light and dark.

In truth, Fai knew, they weren't moving at all; it was the universe that moved about them. He could just barely make out - at the edges of his perception - the multitude of universes, each one compressed into a single ring and bleeding seamlessly into the next. An endless flattened spiral of potential realities that Mokona wound steadily past them, feeding one into another as she searched instinctively for that which she was born to find.

Mokona really was amazing, Fai thought. Clow's craftsmanship put his own humble efforts at creating magical life to shame.

A flicker of darkness out of the corner of his eye - even as he glanced that way, it slid around before them and expanded in a sudden inrush of air, the gape of a mouth opening, and the four of them fell forward together into the new world.

 _Dark_ was the first impression the new world left on him, and then _dry_ and _warm_ after that. They were surrounded by stone - Fai could feel it under his feet and fingertips, hear it in the "ow!" noises that Sakura made when she moved too quickly and banged her shins and elbows on the walls, in the scraping sound of Syaoran's boots and his scabbard where it dragged against the wall.

"Where are we?" Sakura asked, her voice hushed.

"Well, it's hard to discern _too_ much about this world just yet, but I'd say it looks like we're in a cave," Fai said, bright and chipper, designed to make her giggle and break the tension.

The air around them was dry and warm - not uncomfortably so, but enough that they certainly wouldn't need coats in this new world. But there was a strange tang to it, a sharpness that made the eyes water slightly and caught in his throat like a cold. Beside him, Syaoran drew in a deep breath and almost immediately began to cough.

"What's that smell?" Sakura asked, her voice hushed. "It smells like something's burning."

"We won't find out unless we go looking," Syaoran said, his usual firm confidence somewhat belied by his cough-roughened voice. "Come on, let's get out of this cave."

A featureless grey light from up ahead marked the end of the cave system, and the travelers headed towards it. Kurogane, with his unparalleled night vision, could have come in handy here - the cave they were in was obviously natural, rough and unfinished with an uneven floor and walls. Fai barked his shin once and his shoulder painfully against jutting rock ledges before they made it to the cave mouth and looked out.

The cave they had arrived in was about a third of a way up a rocky ridge that rolled off to either side, climbing steeply behind them. Before them the ground dropped over rocky steppes towards a wide basin of ruddy, reddish-brown rock and dust. A few trees stuck up here and there in the ground, dark and leafless, and dry and withered grass covered the lower slopes. Far off on the horizon, at the edge of their vision, was the silvery-gray glint of the sea.

Dominating the scene, however, was the huge billowing smoke cloud that covered the entire eastern sky to their right. Churning black clouds underlit by vivid orange and red cast an eerie red glow over the landscape, doubling up with the fading sunset on the west to cast a confusing array of shadows. When the wind veered around to blow from the east, it blew hot and dry with the sharp and cutting tang of ash and cinders.

The black clouds moved in slow, bulging waves, tracing back downwards from the sky to the horizon that jutted up to meet them. Even from this distance, the sullen red glow of molten rock was clearly visible - a mountain afire, belching its soot and ash over the ground below.

* * *

As the travelers climbed down the side of the stony ridge, they began to see signs of civilization; it was hard to say when exactly the gravel-coated gullies and brush-free clearings turned into a proper road winding among the foothills. Next they began to see the stepped terraces and straight-cut lines of fields, now lying bare, and the marching lines of trees kept in orchards, their leafless branches jutting up to the sky. When they finally spotted the village up ahead, it was hard to distinguish its color from the drab rocky ground that surrounded it; only the blocky square lines of the stone foundations stood out.

The town - village, really - was not much more than a loosely clustered array of houses and barns surrounding a common area, with the broad gravel road stretching beside it. A few goats browsed at the dead grass by the verge, tended by a herdsboy who watched them pass with curious eyes but did not approach.

The sun was rapidly sinking in the sky, the oncoming twilight reinforced by the heavy grey-black clouds covering much of the sky, and after a brief flurry of consultation the travelers decided to try to find a place in the village to spend the night rather than pressing onwards and trying to camp out in the open. Decision made, they turned off the road into a stone-paved plaza in what seemed to be the center of the town, and Syaoran approached a local woman who was sweeping ash from the stones with a rush broom.

She wore a red skirt with a white apron-like pleat down the front, a red cap over her greying dark hair, and a tan-colored vest-like top sewn of two swathes of cloth crossing over her chest to create a V-shaped pattern. This seemed to be the common style in the village, as men and women wore similar styles, albeit the men's outfits were in darker, duller colors and the ends of their kilts tucked pants-like into their boots.

"Excuse me, ma'am," Syaoran said, as polite and deferential as he ever was. "But my friends and I have lost our map, and I'm afraid we've gotten a bit turned around. What town is this?"

The woman looked a bit surprised to be addressed, but returned his greeting; "Good evening, young sir," she said politely, but with a certain wariness in her manner. "This town is called Gossos, but you won't find it on any maps, I'm afraid. Where were you on your way to?"

"We're new to the area, and we're just looking to see the sights," Syaoran explained earnestly. "Is there anything around here that you'd recommend for a few travellers, any big temples or shrines, or legends of wondrous miracles that have taken place?"

It was a not-so-subtle way to fish for rumors of the feather, in Fai's opinion, but they'd learned in many worlds past that it was most efficient just to cut to the chase and be direct. If they were likely to get into trouble for it, they would have run into the same trouble sooner or later anyway; and most people really were happy to be helpful.

But despite her friendly demeanor, the townswoman only closed up further at Syaoran's question; she looked... wary, at the least, and uneasy. "Well, now, and what would a trio of nice-looking young folks have want with any of that?" she asked suspiciously. "You look much too clever to be treasure-hunters like the rest of them."

"We're gathering research about all sorts of different cultures to write a book," Syaoran said with a completely earnest expression. Fai wondered idly just how far Mokona's translation skills extended; in a culture that didn't even have books, what would the locals make of this excuse? Or would they naturally hear it as something that made sense to them?

"Oh, really!" However it came across, the usual excuse worked like a charm; in an instant the woman's stiff wariness had vanished, and she smiled at them warmly. "Please forgive me, there have been too many disreputable folk through here lately; we don't usually get very many travelers, you see, especially not in the wintertime."

"Wintertime?" Syaoran said with surprise. "This is your wintertime?"

The old lady gave them a dry look. "Certainly," she said. "Why else would the trees and the ground be so bare, except for the season?"

"But it's so warm!" Syaoran exclaimed, a feeling that Fai echoed; this was what passed for _winter_ in this place? It was barely cool enough to be uncomfortable!

"Well, what can you expect with old Theras going off in the background?" she said, gesturing in the direction of the burning volcano in the distance. "In a way we're only grateful that he chose these barren months to vent his fury; we won't lose any of the crops this way, and we still have a good harvest from last autumn to hold us through the winter months. Come spring, the ash and cinders will be settled, and good for the crops. It's a shame you came to our valley at this time of the year, travelers; when the poppies bloom in the springtime, our village is truly a sight to behold."

"Oh, thank goodness!" Sakura whispered to Fai heartfeltly. "I felt so awful thinking that these people would have to live in this bleak place all the time. But if it's only for a season, then it's not so bad!"

"My name is Sophia," the woman was introducing herself, and she gestured to a farmhouse not far away. "I live just over there; you should come by my house a little later, and have some of my soup."

"That's very generous of you," Syaoran said sincerely. "Is there an inn nearby, where we can stay for the night?" Syaoran asked.

"Well, now, we're not nearly grand enough to have a whole inn to ourselves," she said. "But if you need a place to rest, you can stay in the _lesche."_

She raised her arm and pointed to a wide, open structure at the corner of the town square. The _lesche_ \- for some reason, the word did not translate through Mokona, perhaps because neither of Fai's home cultures could have envisioned such a shelterless shelter - took up a corner of the town square. Like the other buildings it consisted of chiseled stone pillars holding up a slate tile roof, but unlike the other building, there were no walls - only woven screens positioned to break the wind and sun. Within the open space, an assortment of chairs and benches were arranged on a clay-tiled floor, obviously some kind of communal meeting place; another screen cast a shade of privacy over an assortment of straw pallets lying on the floor.

They'd had worse shelters, that was for sure. "Thank you, that's very kind," Syaoran said. "Is there any way we can pay you back? We don't have very much cash, but we have a few goods to trade -"

Sophia waved away the offer with a scoff. "You three are our _guests! "_ she said, scandalized that they should offer. "Let's have no talk of payment, not for the first night. What sort of world would it be if travelers were not made welcome in any home they came to?"

Shortly after they had settled into the lesche (not that they had much in the way of baggage to unpack,) Sophia appeared with a tray of three steaming bowls of soup. Despite the fact that the night air was quite mild, almost warm, she urged Syaoran and Sakura to drink up so that they wouldn't catch cold, then scolded at Fai to "get some meat on your long bones." Fai laughed and joked with her in a friendly way, carefully drawing her into their circle, and before long the elderly woman was seated at their table, rattling on confidingly about the history of Gossos and its surroundings.

Before long, her story drew to the most lurid - and therefore the most interesting - element of local history: the shrine at Akros. Apparently it had been not just a shrine but a small city, rings of roads and buildings spreading outwards from the temple and the road leading up to it as the population slowly grew. It had started as a home for the Oracle of Theras, then became an administrative center for the surrounding area, then a town under siege when a small but fierce civil war had beset the region. Then, in the years after the Oracle had died and the war moved on, its power had slowly begun to wane - until all at once, one dark bloody evening, it had been wiped out.

"The town is cursed," Sophia told them in a dramatic whisper, shivering with a combination of fear and a certain dramatic delight. "Cursed! They had grown full of themselves, those city folk, thought themselves better than they were. Their pride drove away the the blessings of the gods, and malice crept in its place. A dark shadow grew over that town. But still the stubborn cityfolk refused to leave! Still they stayed! Until at last the final blessings of the gods deserted them, and the demons swept in and killed them all!"

Sakura gasped in dismay, and Syaoran sat bolt upright, focusing on the old lady with a laser-like intensity. "Demons?" he asked. "Are you sure? Did anyone ever see them?"

"Who could have seen them, and lived to tell the tale?" Sophia scoffed. "I was but a child then. But that's the story. A few brave men have ventured up there since then, seen the bodies lying in the street. Some of them dared to enter the temple - they never returned. The smarter ones fled. But still they brought back tales of a sinister presence that haunts the temple, a monster that devours all who dare to enter. The Black Beast. Even today, none who have seen it have lived to tell the tale."

"But why would anyone go there when it's so dangerous?!" Sakura exclaimed.

Sophia sighed. "Why else but overconfidence, and greed?" she said. "They say that a great treasure was hidden in the heart of that temple, a relic that shone even in the darkness. There's no end of adventurers and treasure hunters who go to the temple, certain that they can accomplish what all those before them could not - to slay the beast and claim the treasure for themselves. Why, just the other day a grim man, all in black, passed by that road that leads up to the temple. Dressed all in armor, clanking mail and a great bloody sword as black as he was. As if he will fare any better than the rest!"

Syaoran and Fai exchanged a glance behind Sophia's back. Strange happenings, curses and disappearances, sacred objects shining with their own light - it all pointed to Sakura's missing feather.

As the last of the light faded, Sophia excused herself to return to her home; in this rural village, it seemed, people rarely had reason to stay awake later than the sun. In the darkening gloam, Sakura turned to Fai and Syaoran and asked the question they had all been thinking. "That treasure-hunter that the lady described - do you think it could have been Kurogane? Or, well, not Kurogane but _another_ Kurogane, the Kurogane of this world?"

"It's not really enough to go on, Sakura-chan," Fai replied. For himself, he privately admitted he hoped it was not. Kurogane in any world was far too perceptive, and more than capable of presenting an obstacle to them if he reached the feather before they did and then did not wish to part from it.

"Still, if it is him, it might be incredibly lucky," Syaoran said, as usual displaying a much more optimistic view of the world. "He's only a day or so ahead of us. We might catch up to him! If so, he might be able to help us."

"But this treasure-hunter had a horse, and we have none," Fai pointed out. "It's extremely unlikely that we'd cross paths before reaching the shrine."

Sakura chewed on her lip for a moment, face scrunched in thought. After a long silence, she blurted out:

"The Witch - I mean, Yuuko-san - told me back in the shop that things like that don't matter," she said. "How likely or unlikely something is, I mean, the chances or odds of something happening. She said that if it's meant to happen for a reason, then it _will_ happen, no matter how incredible it seems. She called that _hitsuzen_. "

Syaoran frowned. Fai smiled brightly. "Well, if that's the case then there's no point worrying our heads about it," he said. "Nothing we can do will change the outcome one way or the other. Now, come on and let's go to sleep. It sounds like we've got some hiking to do in the morning!"

The children acquiesced, and the three of them settled down on the straw pallets under the tile roof of the _lesche_. They dropped off fairly quickly - Sakura first, as she always tended to do, and Syaoran soon after. Fai lay awake for a long time, watching the last of the light fade from the western sky.

He did not want to spend too much time thinking. He actively avoided most thoughts of the past, or the future. There was only ever the now, and _this_ now, in this place, was a good place to be. He would do whatever he had to in order to make sure that the present stayed as it was, as long as he could manage.

Fai rolled over on his stomach and closed his eyes, letting out a long breath. Around them, the burning volcano bathed the dark land in its furnace glow.

* * *

It was not midafternoon by the time they reached the shrine the next day. Yet the air darkened steadily as they climbed the slopes towards the shrine, the weak light filtering through the ash cloud casting an eerie midwinter gloom over the landscape that contrasted oddly with the mild - even warm - temperatures.

Through his life, and especially since starting on their journey, Fai had come to accept the fact that all different climes had their own special beauty. A landscape didn't need to be covered with rich deep pine trees and hooded with white crystal snow to be beautiful: you could find equal worth in the lush rolling greenery of verdant farmland, the heavy majesty of a mountain range, the complex and vibrant ecology of a swampland or the lively, hectic atmosphere of a big city. Even the serene emptiness of a desert had its own beauty in the wideness of the blue sky, the colors painted by a sunset on the smooth lines of a flat horizon.

But he was having a hard time finding beauty in the terrain they were climbing through now. Admittedly they weren't seeing it in its best light; all the plants were dead and withered, all the rocks dusted over with a fine grey layer of volcanic ash. Still, the only adjective Fai could come up with to describe this land was 'stony;' the soil was thin and gravelly over sharp bones that poked out of the soil at every hilltop and plateau. No wonder even the peasants of the village had built their houses out of rubble and stone; it was practically the only thing that this country had. The trees they passed tended to be stunted - many of them barely over Fai's head - and grew in twisted, kinked directions without leaves to soften their outlines.

And above it all, the sullen orange light of the volcano reflected off the black cloud of smoke that towered overhead, painting everything in the dull glow of an open kiln.

Perhaps it was the poor lighting, but they didn't see the shrine city until they had stumbled nearly upon it. The size of it took them by surprise - they had been looking for a few large buildings, and hadn't realized they were walking through the outskirts of a whole town until they came across the first broken-down fountain. The fountain, the streets and the buildings had all been built of the same native stone as the tiny village of Gossos, but the sharp straight lines that delimited the other buildings from the landscape had broken and crumbled into ruin here. Hardly any building even had a roof left; all that remained were pillars and partial walls.

"This is just like the town in the last world," Sakura said, her voice tense and edged with upset. Syaoran put a hand on her shoulder in comfort.

"Well, one thing's for sure," he said, trying to keep up a cheerful and optimistic tone. "There's no mystery here as to why the people left. It looks like a great battle took place here."

Indeed, the signs of it were all around them. Not all of the buildings had crumbled with time; several bore signs of violence, with doors or walls smashed in by some great force, piles of shattered stones or discarded weapons littering doorways and alleys. There was no sign of any bodies, however, nor of the great beast that the townswoman had spoken of.

"Mokona, can you sense a feather?" Fai asked her, even as he could already guess at the answer. The city had been built up around the shrine, and whatever treasures this forlorn place still hid would be in the shrine as well. There was only one way to go - inwards.

Mokona nodded, her small expression solemn. "Up there," she said in a hushed voice, flicking her long white ears up the slope. The streets of the ruined city fanned out from the center like the spokes of a wheel, with long curving boulevards extending in concentric circles with each step down the mountain. Where all the roads converged, where the center of the wheel turned - that was where the shrine would be. And likewise, Sakura's feather.

The travelers couldn't help but feel a sense of awe as they approached the temple; they might not have been worshippers of whatever gods once dwelt here, but the architect of this place must have had great mastery of his craft. Tall stone columns stood in a row across the lintel of the entryway; they had been carved to grow subtly narrower at the top, giving the illusion of greater height. Intricate marble carvings and colored frescoes decorated the walls and floors and roofs - the paint chipped and fading with the weight of years, but their beauty preserved.

The temple had been carved out of the very face of the mountain; only part of the building emerged from the cliff behind it. The roof and walls faded back into the stone behind it, lending it a great imposing weight as though the whole great volcano were all part of the monument to the gods.

Fai thought it looked cold, unwelcoming - but others in his party had a different opinion.

"This is incredible," Syaoran said, his voice charged with the enthusiasm that only great works of lost art could inspire in him. "Look at the detailed fluting on these columns. Look at the craftsmanship! Look at this, the way the coloring is subtly different on each facing - it's meant to change how it reflects the light and cast shadows as the sun travels across the sky, presenting the best face no matter what time of day it is. What I wouldn't give to see this place at sunrise!"

"That might not be wise," Fai reminded him, keeping an ear cocked for sounds of movement or habitation in the temple. Nothing came out of the dark mouth to greet them but silence. "Remember, this town was abandoned for a reason. And none of the treasure hunters who came here ever came back."

Syaoran's enthusiasm dimmed slightly, and Sakura frowned in distress. "But we aren't treasure hunters," she insisted. "We haven't come to steal or destroy anything!"

"Whoever or... whatever lives here might see it differently, Sakura-chan," Fai corrected her gently. "Just be careful."

The interior of the temple was as grand and richly carved as the facade, but the beauty of the architecture faded quickly as they went further inside. There were no lamps or torches, and as the complex extended further into the mountainside, the ash-filtered daylight could no longer penetrate the gloom. They stopped to retrieve a couple of lanterns from their luggage (that is to say, Mokona's magical storage) and continued on.

Mokona reported that there was a feather somewhere beyond them in the shrine, but she was unable to tell them which route to take in order to get to it. The corridors branched and bent at angles as they delved further into the complex, and if there had ever been distinguishing features or signposts among them, they had long since been obliterated.

Dark grime covered the floor, the a mixture of ash and damp and burned-out cinders, perhaps some other less savory substances ground into the muck. The only tracks were the tiny ones of rodents scampering here and there near the base of the walls, where mortar had crumbled enough to provide passage. There were many such places; the walls were battered and broken along the large hallways, mosaics and frescoes spilling splintered stone tiles onto the floor and leaving only patchy remnants of their subjects behind. In more than one place the walls themselves were smeared with dirt, or hung with the withered remains of dried moss or curtains of cobwebs.

Syaoran, as practical as ever, took a piece of white chalk out of his pocket and began marking the walls as they went, arrows at every turn showing which way they had turned and which way they were facing. "Just so that we don't get lost," he explained, glancing at Fai for approval. Fai merely shrugged. Syaoran had a point that this place was downright labyrinthine; on the other hand, the marks Syaoran made were also an excellent signposts for anything that wanted to follow them.

Assuming, of course, that whatever might be following them in such a place as this was smart enough to read the signs.

They reached a round, broad chamber with black stone walls, obviously carved out of a native cavern inside the mountain. Niches in four corners of the room branched off into winding staircases, some leading up, some leading down.

"Which way should we go?" Sakura asked nervously. Her sunny disposition was holding up well so far, but the dank and gloomy atmosphere of the temple was getting to all of them.

"Mokona? Can you tell which way leads to the feather?"

The little creature flipped her ears, hopped back and forth from one of Syaoran's shoulders to the other, turning to face different directions. "Mokona isn't sure," she apologized. "But the feather feels a little bit lower than we are now."

"Down, then," Syaoran said firmly.

The curving, spiraling staircase got them turned around, made it hard to orient themselves once more when they got to the bottom of the staircase and found a wide corridor arching away in both directions. After consulting Mokona once again they picked a direction and set off, Syaoran dutifully marking the passages as they went; but soon the curving passages twisted and doubled back on themselves, a hopelessly tangled maze of corridors.

What made them even more uneasy was that some of the passages rose in a gradual slope, while others fell, subtly enough that it was hard to tell what level of the complex they were even on any longer. They located another staircase and went up it, hoping to retrace their passage to the antechamber of stairways and try to map the route from another direction; but they soon found that not all the stairways led to the same floors, sometimes skipping a flight altogether or curving around to deposit them in another place on the same floor.

As they went deeper, a foul smell was beginning to gather in the air. Their noses had by now numbed to the acrid, sharp smell of sulfur and ozone that the volcano spewed forth, but this was a new smell - something wet and organic, like rancid milk.

For all his close and personal experience with death, Fai had not actually personally witnessed the decomposition of human remains. Rather definitively the opposite, in fact. So perhaps that was why Fai didn't make the connection until they turned a corner into a broad circular chamber that opened up before them like a theater. High up above, a hole in the arched ceiling led to some open space above, a dim greenish light shining down and drops of liquid occasionally falling from the sky like rain. A pool of water had gathered in a depression in the center of the room, green and slimed, and the pool was clogged full of human bones.

Syaoran gasped, and Sakura gave a strangled little cry, her hands flying up to cover her mouth. It shouldn't have been such a shock. They knew from Sophia's gossip that many aspiring treasure-hunters had come to the shrine and that none had ever returned. It didn't take much of a stretch of the imagination to know that they would still be here in some form. But none of that had prepared them for the gruesome reality of this place: bones piled on bones, blackened and decayed with the rotting remnants of flesh and the scavengers that had cleaned them of it. They carpeted the circular room, here and there piled up in careless heaps, and it was impossible to tell just by looking at the decaying mass just how deep it went.

On top of the nearest pile, not far from them, lay the mangled remains of what had once been a tall, bulky man in black armor. His features were unrecognizable, nearly torn off his face by the swipe of some great claw, and the bottom half of his torso and legs were missing, separated by a humongous jagged bite. Near his hand lay the warped and shattered pieces of a thick, heavy short sword and a crumpled shield.

"We have to get out of here," Fai said aloud, breaking the stunned shock that had fallen over the three of them at the grisly sight. He put an arm around Sakura's shoulders and turned her around, steering her towards the ground as he blocked the view with his body, and his other hand reached out to tug on Syaoran's cloak. "Now!"

"But -" Syaoran choked out, but his eyes darted to Sakura's ashen-grey face and he didn't argue further. They stumbled out through the blackened corridor, their torchlight playing over dark smears and black-stained gouges in the stone wall.

Finding their way out again was easier said than done. Without Syaoran's marks they would have been completely lost, but even following the marks was not as straightforward as they assumed it would be. They hurried quickly through the corridors from mark to mark, traveling in the opposite direction they had come, but on more than one occasion they went for a long time down a stone corridor before seeing one before they realized they must have missed a turn and hurried back to search for the trail again. Once they lost it entirely, becoming increasingly frantic as they searched through a stone loop of branching corridors none of them recognized before Fai realized that they had gone up a level from Syaoran's last mark without realizing it; they had to retrace their steps and find the mark again before they could continue.

All the while Fai strained his hearing for some sign of pursuit, of danger; was that knocking sound heavy footsteps on the floor above them, or merely the pounding of his own heart? Was that rushing noise the heavy breathing of a demon on the back of his neck, or only Sakura's near-sobs as she stumbled along through the darkness? Syaoran held onto Hien like a talisman, his brown eyes darting around at every corner and cross-corridor, but they all knew that he was still not much more than a beginner with the sword.

If only Kurogane had been here, they would not have been so afraid; Fai knew enough about the swordsman's past to know that he was unparalleled at fighting. Kurogane probably would protest their running away, would been eager to test his skill and to dispatch the hell-beast to the underworld it deserved. He would see this whole episode as a _challenge_ he could rise to, a pleasant respite from the oh-so-boring worlds where there was nothing to fight at all.

Why did it have to be _this_ world, of all possible worlds, that Kurogane couldn't be here?

"Look! Up ahead!" Mokona shouted, bouncing up and nearly vibrating in eagerness as she pointed down the corridor ahead. They'd gotten turned around again somehow, or put off the trail of Syaoran's marks - but that didn't matter because at the end of the tunnel, a long stretch of carved stone, was the distinct red-tinted color of sunlight.

"But we're on the wrong side of the temple!" Syaoran exclaimed, looking up and down the corridor. "There's no possible way we could have come to the exterior facing of the structure, not from here!"

"The mountain is hollow," Fai realized suddenly, comparing the shape of the mountain they'd climbed to the others around it. "It was a volcano once, like Thera. It's dormant now, but there's a crater on the inside of it, and part of the temple in the caldera would be open to the sky."

"And they built their temple there!" Syaoran finished the thought for him. "Completely inaccessible from the outside - no wonder they used this place as a fortress during the war."

"But does that mean that my feather is there, as well?" Sakura said anxiously.

"Mokona thinks so!" Mokona cried. "It feels like it's not far away now."

"Then that means we've almost finished!" Syaoran said enthusiastically. The relief was plain on Sakura's face as that realization sank in, and Fai let out a breath himself, despite the fact that he knew perfectly well that they weren't yet -

The light went out.

The circle of lantern-light was all that was left to them, and in that light Fai saw Syaoran's expression turned to horror as Sakura's turned pale. Something had moved into the corridor ahead of them - something big enough that its body alone blocked out the view of the corridor ahead.

Of course, they should have thought of this. Of course, if the caldera was the heart of the temple, the place where its greatest treasures were kept, then that would also be where they would find any of the shrine's protectors.

Fai could hear the sounds of the thing's passage now, and knew it was _not_ his imagination; the echo of claws - or hooves? - on stone, the heavy breathing that drew across the air of the corridor like a metal file, the low rumbling growl that sounded like it came from the earth itself.

"The black beast," Syaoran breathed.

From far down the corridor, light gleamed on something wet and white, on two points of red like dull coals in a bed of black ashes. They seemed to grow in size even as they watched, the noises echoing up the corridor growing in intensity as they stood frozen.

Syaoran was the one to move, stepping in front of them and drawing Hien. "Get Sakura out of here," he ordered Fai. He didn't turn his head to look at them, keeping his gaze unwavering on the nightmare that came steadily up the hallway towards them. " _Run!"_

Fai snatched Sakura into his arms, and ran.

Behind him he heard a deafening roar reverberating along the rock corridor, trapped in the stone just like they were, but he didn't look back to see what had become of Syaoran - he just ran. It was something he was good at, probably the thing he was very best at in the worlds ( _even more so_ than magic.) But even though Sakura was not a big girl, she was still an added hundred pounds of dead weight in his arms, and he was lost in the maze of twisting hallways and winding stairs. There was no time to stop and look at any of Syaoran's markings, he just bolted headlong and hoped for the best.

"Syaoran-kun -" Sakura cried out, then gulped back a sob and concentrated on making herself as small as she could in Fai's arms. It didn't help much, there was really no non-awkward way for Fai to carry Sakura in his arms; already he was beginning to feel winded from their flight, his steps beginning to drag down with fatigue. They'd covered over a mile of actual ground, he estimated, but so much of it had been doubling back or going off in an unintended direction that he had no idea how far it actually was to the exit.

And they were being followed. There was no sound or sign of Syaoran, which Fai couldn't let himself think about right now. But sometimes when he turned a corner or ducked into a stairwell he caught a glimpse of the _thing_ that was chasing them - a huge, black-furred hulk that took up the whole tunnel, its humped neck scraping the ceiling even as it carried its black body horizontal to the ground on four legs behind it. Some of the marks on the corridor walls became clear to Fai, now, as he imagined the impressions made by the passage of the beast through the corridors. As did some of the marks on the bodies they'd found in the pit.

The dark entrance to a stairwell flashed by him, and Fai rebounded off the nearest wall to turn himself into it. He hoped that the confined space of the narrow stairwell would be too small for the beast to follow. Still, the steep steps took a toll from his body, and despite the urgency of his blood thrumming through his ears Fai couldn't stop himself from slowing down as they approached the top of the stairs, gasping for air. His legs felt like jelly, and his arms where they clutched Sakura to him were numb.

"I can walk," Sakura gasped, squirming slightly (though not enough to upset his balance.) "Please, Fai-san, I'm not a child - please don't exhaust yourself trying to make up for me, I can keep up -"

"We're on the top level again!" Mokona interrupted, speaking up from her nest in Sakura's hands. "Look - there's Syaoran's markings! If we go left down the hallway, we can get out the main hall!"

Freedom - perhaps safety. It was so close to them that they almost thirsted for it, for sunlight and clear air. But before they could take more than a few steps down the hallway, the walls shook and a terrible roar sounded from the corridor just past the next juncture.

They were out of time. Fai threw Sakura away from him as hard as he could, setting her on her feet for a bare moment before he propelled her slight body away from him down the corridor, and then he turned to face his pursuer. He could only pray to whatever gods were listening that he was able to delay the beast for longer than Syaoran had.

There was no chance to Fai to even consider whether it would be worth it, at this late juncture, to break his self-made promise not to use magic - he never even got the opportunity. Instead he felt a blow along his back that jolted him off his feet, the walls and floor tilting around him. The world spun nauseatingly and then he felt his back strike the wall with an impact that left stars across his vision as his head hit the stone.

Something hot and stone-hard held him pinned there, a colossal grip that trapped his right arm against his body and pressed him bruisingly against the wall. A monstrous head loomed into his vision, red eyes blazing; dark lips peeled back around a double row of razor-sharp teeth that opened like the gates of Gehenna. And then the beast spoke.

 ** _"YOU!"_** the beast roared, the volume of its voice almost as stunning as the fact that it could speak at all. But it wasn't _only_ the volume, but - **_"YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD!"_**

\- not only the volume, but the pitch and timbre of that voice, deeper and louder than he had ever heard it but still so _familiar,_ oh so familiar. It was the exact shade of red in its eyes, eyes the size of saucers and with slit black pupils like a cat's - and yet the exact shape of those eyes as they narrowed in a glare at him, he knew. He knew it as he knew the shape of those features, swollen and distorted now in their new settings, split with a double mouthful of razor-sharp fangs - he knew that face.

" _Kurogane?"_ Fai choked out with the last of his air, and reached up to touch the beast's cheek.

* * *

~to be continued...


	12. Firelands II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Black Beast tells his story.

In moments like these time seemed to crystallize, slowing down and stretching out with a sharp-edged clarity unlike any other. Fai had time to note details that would have been a blur at any other time: the way the swinging lantern-light cast shadows wildly over the walls and ceiling of the crumbling hallway. The long, coarse black hairs that sprouted from the creature's skin, starting at the edges of his face and extending down his neck and throat to cover the whole quadrupedal body, so thick and sharp as to almost be quills. Tree-trunk legs that ended in appendages that were not quite hands and not quite claws, a thick dark layer of scale growing over the back of the fingers making them look almost like an eagle's talons. How the shaggy coat of hair was not even that terribly thick, but covered layer upon layer of bulging muscle that rippled with every movement of the creature's long, powerful body, adding to the menacing bulk. The deadly scorpion's tail that hung over those heavily-muscled flanks, the tip quivering with the eager promise of sudden death.

 **"WHERE THE FUCKING HELL HAVE YOU BEEN ALL THESE YEARS?"** the not-Kurogane roared, filling Fai's vision with the spectre of those deadly teeth. The sheer noise of the words rang around and around in Fai's head, leaving him stunned too stupid to absorb their meaning. **"AFTER ALL I'VE DONE FOR YOU - ALL I'VE** ** _BECOME_** **FOR YOU - AND YOU CHOOSE** ** _NOW_** **TO COME WALTZING BACK LIKE NOTHING'S HAPPENED?"**

The sheer _rage_ in this beast's deadly red eyes, a berserker fury that Fai knew all too well; he'd seen it time and time again on Kurogane's face in the heat of the moon battles in Shara. The primal, almost elemental desire to tear and rend and kill, to bathe in the blood of his opponents and laugh. Every line of this creature before him was filled to overflowing with the same murderous fury - yet for all the violence in their first clash, Fai pinned against the wall with razor-sharp claws against his chest and throat, he hadn't actually hurt him, yet. Even though the creature could kill him in a single blow, for some reason he had chosen not to - but one wrong word out of Fai's mouth would mean his violent death.

"No, I'm not -" Fai said, his voice weak and feeble in the face of that fury. He had to struggle to get air in his lungs, to force the words past the terror clogging his throat. "I'm not _him_ , I'm not -"

His captor lifted him slightly, then slammed him back against the stone wall hard enough to rattle his bones. If possible, the creature's face drew even closer to his own. **"HOW** ** _DUMB_** **D'YOU THINK I AM?"** the deadly voice snarled. **"DO YOU THINK I WOULDN'T KNOW YOUR FACE,** ** _YUI?"_**

In that stretched-out moment, the thoughts seemed to fall into Yuui's mind like clear drops of water, one by one.

-One: Clearly, this other Kurogane must have known another him, once.

-Two: Equally clearly, this other him must be dead, or he would not have been able to come into this world.

-Three: As well as being other _hims_ in the many worlds, there were other _Fais_ as well; the one he had seen so briefly in the Hangchow market was proof enough of that.

If every Yuui, in every world, had a brother in every world as well -

He only had one chance to get this right, and then this monster would gut him like a fish.

"If you knew him," Fai managed to wheeze. "If you knew - Yuui - well, then he must have told you about me. Didn't he?" He looked straight into those red eyes, narrowed with rage and wild suspicion, and lied with the truth. "I'm not Yuui. I'm his brother - I'm _Fai. "_

For a breathless moment the tableau hung, neither of them moving a muscle. Fai's heart squeezed with breathless hope - it was a wild guess, a shot completely in the dark, but he wasn't dead _yet -_

"Fai-san!" Sakura's voice called out from his left, somewhere down the tunnel beyond the beast's bulk. And from further away, down the corridor where he had come, he heard another voice - "Fai! Sakura! Where are you?"

Fai breathed again. Syaoran was still alive, and he still had the strength to yell - the monster must not have hurt him badly, then, merely knocking him impatiently out of the way in his furious focus on Fai. He should have left Sakura with her, they'd have been safer without him, and perhaps they could have found their way out -

 **"Huh,"** the beast in front of him rumbled, and the pressure on Fai's ribcage eased off as his huge bulk shifted away, easing a few feet back down into the corridor. " **I guess you are."**

* * *

They caught up with Syaoran only a few hundred yards down the corridor, carrying the second lantern and cradling that arm with his free hand. He was shaken, but otherwise unhurt; apparently the beast had only knocked him aside in his hurry, slamming him against the corridor wall but nothing more. Sakura greeted him with a tearful exclamation of relief and a hug, and the two teenagers clung to each other for a moment in the small pool of lamplight.

He could take in more details now about creature's general conformation; in height he topped out at eight feet at the shoulder, a huge bunching of muscles around the neck and shoulder that nearly brushed the ceiling overhead. From there he tapered off to a long, low back to a pair of powerfully-muscled haunches, back-bent like a cat's or a horse's, ending in massive black hooves like a pair of deadly maces. The body seemed a jumble of different animals, topped with a man's face, and Fai could only guess that magic must have been somehow involved in the making of it.

The creature glanced at them, then looked away. " **I suppose you'd better come with me, then,** " he said; his voice was no longer the furious roar of before, but still a deep sonorous rumble that echoed through the maze. He turned, his bulky body filling the corridor as it flowed against itself, and then paced away without looking back at them. Fai and the others had to hurry to keep up.

A daunted silence fell as they made their way through the maze; their walked with utter confidence through the identical, twisting corridors, and there was no time for Syaoran to stop and mark the walls, so they soon became quite lost. Perhaps in an attempt to break the increasingly uncomfortable silence - or perhaps because she really was just that friendly - Sakura was the first to try to strike up a conversation. "We're sorry for intruding without permission," she said. "Thank you for letting us into your home, Mr. Ku - Mister...?"

She trailed off invitingly despite her near mis-step, but the black-furred creature didn't turn to look at her. Sakura cleared her throat and tried again. "Can you tell us your name? It would feel rude just to call you 'mister.' "

 **"What name I once had was lost years ago,"** the Not-Kurogane replied. **"The man that he was is gone, burned away. Now I am what the people of this world call me: the Black Beast, nothing more."**

Sakura fell quiet again, a dismayed look on her face. "That's so sad!" Fai heard her whisper to Mokona, and dearly hoped that the Beast's hearing was not as good as his - or Kurogane's. He was rather afraid that it was even better.

"So," Syaoran said, bravely stepping in to fill the conversational breach. "We - um - we got a little lost before, and we ended up in the room downstairs."

 **"I know,"** the Beast said, still without pausing or looking around. They were coming to wider corridors now, a dim grayish light opening from ahead.

"If you know, then you know - what we found down there," Syaoran said, pushing ahead. "All those - people. The townswoman said that treasure-hunters and the like have been disappearing for years. Were you the one who killed them after all?"

The Beast snorted, a surprisingly familiar sound replayed at thunderous volume. **"Sure did,"** he said. **"They came to kill** ** _me,_** **after all. Every man who's stepped foot in this temple in the last twenty years has attacked me on sight. I'm not going to apologize for defending myself - or my sacred charge."**

Fai dearly hoped it wouldn't occur to either Syaoran or Sakura to wonder what exactly the Beast had survived on for all those years since the townspeople had deserted the area. It had not escaped his notice that not all of the bodies in the pit had been whole.

"Your charge?" Sakura's eyes had gone very round. Syaoran and Sakura both looked at the Beast with a kind of fearful fascination. "Does that mean that you used to work for the temple? You didn't look - like this, then?"

 **"Of course not,"** the Beast replied. **"I was a hero, their finest warrior. I slew hundreds on the battlefield, the enemy fell like chaff before my hand. I held the temple of Akros for thirty-five days while the town was under siege by the Usurper, and for that the Oracle named me her premier knight."**

The corridor abruptly t-ended in a stone chamber, large and rectangular, with a higher ceiling than the surrounding maze. One wall was solid and had what seemed to be windows, or rather vents, cut deep into the stone to the outside face of the mountain; they couldn't see much through them besides a square of dull orange, but some light filtered through nonetheless. The opposite wall was either made of or coated with a layer of black volcanic glass, polished to a dark, almost mirror-like shine; they could see dim moving outlines of themselves as they walked past.

Evidently this was the Beast's living chambers, or what passed for them. A large area in the corner had been cleared of detritus and piled with the decaying remains of tapestries or fabrics, dragged up and wadded into a kind of mattress. Around the rest of the room were various other tables, chests or other pieces of furniture, some in various states of destruction, and other bits of detritus or debris littered the floor that Fai preferred not to examine too closely.

The Beast continued his story without further prompting, this time. **"Orusta knew she was dying; she had foreseen it. She knew that once she was gone, the capital would have no further interest in Akros, and that they would strip this town of defenses until it was overrun by thieves and vandals, the Temple would fall into ruins, and the sacred feather would be taken. She would have done anything to keep that future from coming about, and so would I."** The Beast scowled at the memory, a terrifying expression on his elongated features.

" **On her deathbed, the Oracle laid on me the charge of keeping the Temple, and the sacred relics within it, safe. But not before she used the last of her magic to fix me with a dying curse: that for every person I killed, I would become stronger.** "

There was silence for a few beats, as the travelers tried to parse this revelation. "Umm," Syaoran hazarded. "Are you sure it was meant to be a curse? If you became stronger the more you protect... that sounds more like a blessing than a curse to me."

 **"Yeah,"** the Beast said, his voice dust-dry. **"I thought so, too. Then."**

"Think it through, Syaoran-kun," Fai said gently. He already had, and the thought of it made him ill.

Such a spell would seem like a blessing indeed - at first. The problem was that such an open-ended spell had no upper bound, no ending condition. It would root itself in the host like a parasite, feeding on itself, growing geometrically each time the conditions were fulfilled. How much magical energy could be poured into a single human body before it began to warp and twist under the assault? How strong could one human being become, before he started to become something that wasn't even human any more?

On the long dark wall of mirrors, starting at the left end and marching in a steady progression across, was a series of painted white outlines. If you stood in front of the wall you could see your own darkened silhouette; someone had stood before the mirror and reached out to draw an outline around what they saw, capturing it permanently. An indelible record of the changes over time.

The first outline was that of a man - a big man, a strong man, with bulging upper arms and thick shoulders and neck, but still only a man. As the outlines progressed, the basic shape began to morph out of the bounds of what could be considered recognizably human; the head grew tall enough to brush the ceiling, then shrunk and disappeared behind the steadily thickening outline of the neck and shoulders, now merged into a bulging hump. The legs began to bend under the weight, the feet thickening into massive hooves to support the body above it. The very last outline, near the right-hand wall, even had the distinct outline of horns peeking up from where the face would have been. The next mirrored panel beside it was smashed by some titanic force, shards of black volcanic glass crusted by ancient blood scattered over the floor before it.

 **"Enough,"** the Beast said abruptly, rising and walking over towards the mirror-wall. His black bulk slid between them and the dim outlines, blocking their view of them, and he turned his ferocious gaze on them. **"You didn't come here to hear my sob story, now did you? You want to know about your brother."**

In all honesty, there was nothing that Fai wanted _less._ He knew, abstractly, that there were other versions of _him_ out there. He wasn't a fool; he knew that the others had met one such _him_ in the last world they had come to, and that the meeting had not been auspicious. He did not particularly want to hear of any more tragedies, any more betrayals and lies and deaths.

But that was their cover story - Fai's supposed connection to the lost 'Yuui' was their only excuse for being here. If the Beast found out the truth - that they were here for the feather after all - they'd probably end up as smears on the shiny black wall, their bones tumbling carelessly to rot in the pit below.

So Fai made himself smile, and if it was a little tighter and more tremulous than he could usually conjure, if the Beast's red eyes pierced right through that smile as surely as Kurogane's ever had - well, that could be excused by the topic at hand. "Yes," he answered. In their walk over here Fai had time to refine the cover story a little better, to rehearse the lies he would tell.

"When my brother left home all those years ago, at first he claimed it would be no more than another research trip," Fai lied easily, drawing on his own self-knowledge to spin a convincing story. If he ran afoul of some inconsistency, if he got some essential detail wrong about his own 'brother,' they might well all be dead. But given how much Syaoran's alter had been like Syaoran, how much Sakura's alter had been like Sakura, how much the Beast was very, very like Kurogane - he felt pretty confident in his guesses. "But he never came back. We didn't worry so much, at first - he'd been away for longer than planned, before, when he'd get distracted by some new shiny thing and lose track of time, or lock himself in the library for days and forget to eat..."

The Beast snorted again, sardonic agreement, and Fai flashed him a quick shaky grin. He clasped his hands together and stretched them between his knees, staring past them to the floor to avoid that forbidding visage. "But after enough time had passed, we knew he must be dead," he said quietly. "His notes, the effects he left behind - all the signs of his passage, years gone cold, led to here. I wanted - I hoped... I just wanted to know. What he found here. And why he didn't come back to us."

 **"You want to know,"** the Beast asked. **"What he cared enough to die for?"**

When Fai's nod came a bit too slowly, a bit too hesitant, the Beast tilted his head and regarded Fai with a kind of dispassion. **"D'you think that I killed him?"**

Fai made himself look up into the Beast's eyes and he wished that he could say _no._ And it wasn't just because this man before them was a killer and unashamed about it, that the evidence of all those he killed was rotting in heaps downstairs. It wasn't just that. Because Kurogane was a killer too, Fai had always recognized it in him even if the children never had; Fai had smelled the blood in his soul the same way he had always smelled it off Ashura.

No, the reason he wished he could lie and say _no_ was because he knew that Kurogane, for all the violence in him, was a good man. That he did not kill without reason, that he did not kill the innocent. And Fai knew himself well enough that he could not be sure that the _him_ in this world - the man who shared a soul with him - was any kind of innocent.

He didn't know. He didn't want to know. So he only swallowed and looked down to the side, without answering.

 **"Fair enough,"** the Beast said. He was silent for a long time, and then he spoke.

 **"The rumors spread,"** he said, **"as the last of the Temple servants left..."**

* * *

Just as the Oracle had predicted, the political interest in Akros faded after the Oracle died. One by one the other priests and officials had left, to other postings or to return to their families, or just as their nerves broke. The temple became empty, decrepit ruin beginning to creep in as its caretakers deserted it. One man, no matter how strong, was not enough to keep the hallways clean and the lanterns lit, even if he had cared enough about such things to try.

What he cared about was to guard the sacred relic, and that he did. As the economic lifeblood of the temple town below withered, its people became less reverent, more desperate. More and more of them appeared not as worshippers and supplicants, but as thieves and vandals, seeking to loot the wealth of the temple for their own gain or merely smash it out of malice.

He killed them all, and his strength grew. And grew.

The change came on him gradually; with so few others around to see it, so few faces to reflect himself in, he could ignore it for a very long time. The last of the servants fled in terror, not even pretending to come to the Temple once every fortnight to attend to their duties. No one came from the central Temple at the capital to relieve him of his duties, or to assign a new priestess. No one came at all except more vandals and killers, and at last, unexpectedly, a hero.

The day he came out of his seclusion to investigate a noise in the temple and came face to face with one of the legendary heroes of Theras - the day that hero took one look at him and sprang to attack with a bloodthirsty battlecry, that was the day that he realized the truth. By then it was too late.

He withdrew into the Temple, hiding his face from the world. It did no good; they kept coming, thieves and assassins, eager to slay the monster and steal its hoard. He killed and he killed, he couldn't _stop_ killing; they came to slay him because he was a monster and he became more monstrous with every life he took.

The villagers of Akros avoided the Temple, speaking of it only in fearful whispers; they spoke of demons, curses. They let the would-be treasure seekers pass with terrible portents of what they would find in the crypt beyond - monsters to slay and treasures to win. None of them spoke any more of the faithful defender of the Temple, the Oracle's blessed night, nor of the largesse of the gods that had always been their charge to keep and defend. None.

Until Yuisha came.

The Beast's harsh growl of a voice softened as he reached this part of the tale, lightening with the recollection of a better time. Yuisha came from the East, from the far reaches of Xerxes, the exotic and distant empire that the people of Theras had alternately warred with and traded with over the years. He came on the strength of rumors that had travelled hundreds of miles across desert and water to find him: of a sacred relic which glowed with its own inner light, beautiful and strange, inscribed with words that no one could read.

Yuisha had seen a crude rendering of the design and thought that he could translate it, that the runes hid secrets of miracles and healing which he could unlock. He came not to plunder and destroy, but to learn.

And when he stood in the antechamber of the Temple and came face to face with the monster of the maze - when he laid eyes on the monstrous hulk before him, twisted with magic and stained black with blood - Yuisha had not screamed or cowered in fear, had not struck out with word or blade. He had reached out with gentle hands and touched, his own blue eyes wide with amazement, his fair hair wisping around his head as though the sun had come to shine in the Temple for the first time in twenty years.

The Beast paused here for a very long time, leaving the three travelers hanging breathlessly on his narration. Fai was almost numb with the effort of controlling his reactions, being sure not to betray any hint of anything untoward.

 **"We became friends,"** the Beast said simply.

For a time life returned to the temple. Yuisha did not disdain the simple chores of cleaning, and if the whole body of the temple was too much for him to manage, at least he was happy to sweep and scrub the sanctuary, the wide-open dining hall they stood in right now, the corridors between them. He was an artist as well as a scholar and it filled him with great and shining joy to uncover the beauty of the temple, to clean the mosaics and murals of grime.

But he went further than that, mixing paints out of the crusted pigments and decorating every blank wall with abstract renditions of birds and beasts and flowers. He only laughed when his host grumbled about his choice of subject, claiming that there was not enough of the beauty of nature in Akros that they could afford to squander it.

Feasts for the senses were not the only kind that Yuisha prepared; he was also a more than capable cook, and stepped up readily to the challenge of stoking his host's unnatural bulk with food. The temple had kitchens built in, of course, though they were long since stripped bare; Yuisha cleaned out the rotting refuse of all that remained and filled it with fresh ingredients from the markets below.

Yuisha often left the temple to venture out into the town, despite repeated warnings and disapproval; Akros was not the most friendly of towns, in the wake of the war and its gradual abandonment by the capital. Everyone in Akros knew of the monster hidden in the dungeon, though few now remembered who he had once been; they lived under the constant shadow of his terror. They hated him, but they also feared him, and that fear kept them cowering in their homes rather than storming the temple to try to make an end to him.

Yuisha was a stranger among them - a foreigner from the far-off distant lands who were more commonly at war than at peace. He stayed in the Temple without harm coming to him, crossed and recrossed the boundaries of the cursed grounds with a sunny smile on his lip. He brought cursed gold to spend in the marketplace, stolen from the purses of the adventurers who had gone there and never returned. He walked openly into the land of the dead, and no shadows clung to him.

They hated Yuisha as they hated him - but Yuisha, they did not fear. And Yuisha, they could _reach_.

So it came about one day that Yuisha went down to the town below shortly before lunch, to buy meat and herbs for their dinner. He promised to be back before the sun had crossed three hours' marks across the facade of the Temple, and at first, the one who waited for him did not trouble overmuch when he was late. Yuisha was often late, easily distracted by some novelty or another.

But the afternoon darkened into evening, and then into night, and Yuisha never came.

He emerged from the temple at last, the sound of his footsteps thundering against the stone steps leading down to the town. The townspeople drew back from him, hiding in their homes or in alleys as he stalked past, his horned head casting long shadows from the last of the blood-red sun as it fell behind the horizon. None dared stand in his path, or even look upon him as his heavy measured tread shook the foundations of the town.

He found Yuisha - or what he thought must be Yuisha - by the edge of the town square, his hands chained to a hitching-post. It was for this reason that he had thought at first when he saw Fai that perhaps - perhaps - there had been some mistake. The face was too pulped and ravaged to be sure, but no one else in Akros had that bright blond hair - now caked black with blood over the caved-in skull - or that style of clothes, shredded and stained where they had dragged in the dirt.

The howl that split the air above the scene of the crime sent all the townspeople to scatter; the roar of rage that followed sent them fleeing to their homes where they cowered behind doors or under tables as though such petty shelters would _save them._ They knew better; they knew their guilt, knew their crime, and should have known better than to think that they would be spared the wrath that fell upon them then.

"And then?" Syaoran asked, his voice thin and breathless with trepidation.

The red eyes of the Beast bored into him, their crimson gaze relieved only by a slow blink. **"And then what? I killed them."**

"The... ones who were responsible?" Sakura said anxiously, hopefully, and Fai had to bite his tongue not to shush her. Lest they forget that they were guests in the Beast's lair, the last thing he wanted was for Sakura to push the boundaries of their host's patience. But she was young and brightly optimistic, and wanted to believe the best of everyone, and she wanted to hear a happier ending than the evidence of the ruined town and the Beast's own curse would tell.

 **"They were** ** _all_** **responsible,"** the Beast snarled, his voice rumbling in a chest the size of a kiln. He half-rose to his feet, his scorpion's tail lashing agitatedly above them. **"Every one! Whether their hands actually tied a rope or lifted a stone, or only egged each other on... or even if they just turned their faces away and did nothing because they feared for their own miserable lives if they stood in the way.** ** _All of them!"_**

Sakura made a noise of distress, and this time Fai did move, quickly sliding an arm behind her back to encircle her shoulders, giving a comforting and warning squeeze to her arm. _Hush,_ he thought at her, even as he tensed to jump up and run again, mind mapping the nearest route to safety. It was a hopeless thought; they had all seen how well that worked the first time.

The Beast slowly settled back onto his haunches, his gaze distant and unwavering. **"I don't remember much of that night,"** he said, his voice low and deep. **"Flashes. Stone and fire, fire in the dark. Smashing down a door... I remember that. Blood on my hands, my face, under my feet. And the sun breaking over the horizon the next morning, rich and red as though it had bathed in it."**

He paused for a moment, and no one else spoke into the silence. After a moment he continued, **"Any who still lived had fled, and good riddance to the lot of them. I came back here... meant to get some things of his. To lay in the grave with him. Then I saw the wall. And I saw what the curse had made of me."**

Four pairs of eyes darted to the polished obsidian wall, the empty stretch at the end of the row of portraits that had been smashed in by some titanic force. There was nothing left in this room - nothing left anywhere in this town - that could provide a clear reflection any longer.

Sakura was the one to shatter the silence, in the end. "But Fai-san," she said, turning to him with wide earnest green eyes; "Can't _you_ break the curse? Make him back the way he used to be?"

Fai's mouth fell open, hanging uselessly for a moment before he made his voice work. "What?" he said, blinking at her stupidly. For all the worlds they'd been through together, for all the time they'd known each other, Sakura still managed to catch him by surprise.

"Can't you cast some kind of, of counterspell?" Sakura exclaimed. "Oh Fai, I _know_ you're a great magician! Can't you help?"

Fai raised his hands weakly, finding himself suddenly the target of every set of eyes in the room. "That's very sweet of you to say, Sakura-chan, but I can't use my magic right now."

"Fai broke the spell on the feather from the last world!" Mokona piped up, and Fai glared at her for a brief moment, traitor that she was.

"But you wouldn't be _casting_ a spell, would you? You'd just be _un-_ casting one, right?" Sakura wheedled. There were tears standing in her bright green eyes, and Fai wavered against them as weakly as he ever did.

"Maybe we should," Syaoran spoke up unexpectedly. "In return for his hospitality. I mean, if we _could_ turn him back into a human being again..."

He trailed off, but Fai could follow the logic in his eyes: even aside from a gesture of kindness, breaking the spell might also benefit their quest for Sakura's feather. The Black Beast was a formidable guardian, and none of them stood a chance against him in his current form; but if they could find a way to turn the beast back into a man, that greatly improved their chances of stealing Sakura's feather away from him.

Personally, Fai thought that Syaoran was being exceedingly optimistic; the Beast had been a mighty warrior long before the curse had come into effect. If he was anything like as powerful as his counterpart in Kurogane, they would have no chance of getting past him with force no matter what shape he was in. "Listen," he began, searching for a way to say this tactfully. He wished Sakura had not been so earnest, so heartfeltedly outspoken, as to bring up the subject in the Beast's very presence. "It's not that simple..."

 **"It is simple,"** the Beast spoke up sharply, and the three travelers looked over him, startled. They'd almost forgotten him, the way his presence melted into the black wall of the stone chamber. **"No."**

"Eh? No?" Sakura looked confused. "What do you mean? If Fai could help you, break the curse..."

 **"I said no, and I meant no."** The Beast rose to his feet, his tail lashing in agitation. **"I didn't ask for your help and I don't want it."**

"But you could be yourself again!" Syaoran said earnestly. "You could be the man you used to be!"

 **"I AM MYSELF!"** the Beast roared, his long teeth snapping in Syaoran's direction. **"D'you think I haven't thought about it before? The man I used to be is gone! Everything he had, everything he** ** _was_** **is gone, fifty years gone. That life is all burned up now and there's nothing left to go back to. What I am now is** ** _all_** **that I am and I'm not going to run from it!"**

Without another word he turned - the scraping of his claws over the stone the loudest sound left in the chamber - and stalked out, the echoes fading gradually in the cavernous halls. The travelers were left behind in the dining chamber, alone and shaken.

* * *

The Beast didn't return, even as the last of the light from the vent-windows darkened into black. Eventually the travelers had dinner - shared from their own stores; there was nothing to eat in the Beast's lair and Fai wouldn't have trusted any food they'd found here anyway.

The grim chamber made for an unsettling place to sleep, but they'd had plenty of practice in their journey of bedding down in uncertain locations. This chamber was warm, out of the wind and rain, and dark enough for their sleep not to be disrupted. And despite the violent promise of violence lurking around the Beast at all times, he had extended his hospitality to them for the night and was unlikely to suddenly turn on them without warning.

At least, Fai thought, they were unlikely to run into anything in this world _more_ dangerous than the Beast; so for the night they were safe enough.

If they slept lightly, that at least was no change to their usual habits. There were no walls or partitions in this chamber, and only the one wide pallet of ancient withered straw and bedding for a mattress. Sakura and Syaoran settled down onto the mattress together, fully clothed and curled up like kittens. It was an arrangement they were well used to in places where they could not get separate bedrooms, or had to sleep in the open; Syaoran slept uneasily, ready to wake on a hair, while Sakura tossed and turned and kicked energetically in the protective circle of his arms.

And yet when they _were_ able to find a town with separate accommodations, Syaoran was still hilariously shy about approaching Sakura within her own 'bedroom.' It was a telling reflection of the ways in which, no matter how far they came from their starting place or how much they changed on the outside, in some ways Syaoran would always be Syaoran.

Of how some parts of them always remained the same, no matter how much the outsides were changed.

* * *

When the next morning dawned, peach and pale orange light shining through the vents, the travelers had recovered somewhat from the shocks of the previous day. There was no sign of the Beast, so they had breakfast - again, from their own supplies - and discussed what to do next.

Syaoran came up with several complicated but ultimately impractical ideas to keep the Beast's attention occupied in one part of the temple while they combed the rest of the temple for the feather. Mokona chipped in with wild elaborations on his plans that served only to distract and confuse the question, while Fai searched for ways to gently and tactfully dissuade Syaoran from trying any of them. Of the four of them, Fai suspected he had the most realistic idea of what kind of man their host really was; the Beast would not be easily deceived, would not take well to the attempt, and was unlikely to hold back on his wrath simply because his target was still only a youth.

Sakura did not join in the discussion, preoccupied by the notion that if only they could convince the Beast to accept their offer to break his curse, he would willingly give up the feather in exchange. Despite the fact that the Beast had rejected the idea in no uncertain terms, she kept circling back to the idea.

"It just doesn't seem right," Sakura said finally, brooding over a last fragment of croissant that she turned over in her hands, squashing it into a tiny cube. "I mean, we're all getting our wishes fulfilled because of Yuuko-san; it isn't fair that we can't grant the wishes of others, as well."

"But he doesn't wish it," Fai said gently. "I can't work any magic on him without his consent, Sakura-chan. That would make me as bad as the ones who put this spell on him in the first place."

Or... perhaps not. _Consent_ was such a complex question in matters of magic, so deeply fundamental and yet so slippery. Most kinds of magic were strengthened by the consent of both the caster and receiver; some could not be cast at all without that consent. It was the deepest secret of the magi, the intimate pact that came with spinning the impossible into reality.

Yet with magic, as with any other power, the temptations to abuse and corrupt that power were strong. And mages, whose training necessarily taught them to think sideways around the traditional definitions of words, often came to interpret 'consent' very loosely indeed. It did not matter to a spell whether the receiver's consent was freely given or coerced, informed or misguided. And so many of the more... questionable mages became quite practiced indeed at bending the truth to their will or whim: leading people astray with false knowledge, or deliberately omitted knowledge, or the worst of all: knowledge that was true and yet not complete. It was possible that the Beast's lost priestess had not realized what an insidious and cruel effect her magic would have, over time; it was equally possible that she had known it would do exactly what she said.

Fai of all people knew how very deeply you could lie with the truth.

"There's so much suffering and unhappiness in this country," Sakura said miserably. "It's one thing when we don't have the power to help people change things but we _do_. We should try to help people when we can, otherwise what's the point of even coming here?"

"But we're not here to save the world, Princess," Syaoran reminded her gently. "We're here to find your feathers. If we can help people along the way that's good, but sometimes that's just not an option."

The four of them lapsed into a glum silence, no nearer to that goal than they had started.

**"Here to find feathers, eh?"**

Sakura shrieked and Syaoran yelped as the quiet was split by a deep, grating voice that seemed to come from nowhere. Fai leapt to his feet as the darkness shifted in a corner of the room, the stones of the very wall seeming to come alive and move towards them. In the better light of morning, he realized with a start that what he had taken for a solid joined corner of the room was in fact a shielded alcove leading away into another dark stone corridor, a second entrance to the room which servants had perhaps used to come and go unobtrusively. Twin points of scarlet light gleamed in the darkness, then resolved themselves into Kurogane's crimson eyes, in the magnified, distorted face of the Beast.

Fai quickly moved to stand between the Beast and Sakura, only to nearly be run over by Syaoran doing the same thing. He glanced behind them to see Sakura, Mokona clenched in her arms, looking at the Beast with an expression that mixed anxiety, sadness and a thin pale thread of hope. "Mister Beast!" she gasped.

He looked at them steadily, his expression closed and walled. It was hard to read what emotions might be behind that face; the huge red eyes and double row of fangs that split his face gave him a ferocious look, but it was hard to say whether that was a result of what he was thinking or just the way his bestial features made him look.

 **"Come with me,"** he rumbled and turned away, his body sliding around behind him with that smooth turn that was so startling in its swiftness. The four travelers shared a nervous look, then scrambled to catch up; none of them wanted to be left alone in this labyrinth.

The corridors were narrow enough that none of them could walk beside the Beast; they trailed after him instead, wondering what he could possibly have in store for them. Reassuringly (perhaps) he led them not downwards towards the pit of bones, but upwards instead; they passed through a maze of corridors and took one of the stairwells that they had not tried before. It wound upwards in a tight spiral, piercing through the rock of the mountain.

The air changed before the light did; the dank and damp smells falling away to be replaced by the piercing, burning smell of ash and cinders instead. All at once the corridor opened up around them and they found themselves on a broad stone balcony, a wide circular ledge running along the inside of a curved cliff. The light filtering in from above was muted and grey, dimmed by the ash clouds, but the change from the darkness of the labyrinth still left them all blinking blindly in the light until their eyes adjusted.

When it did, Sakura let out a gasp and Syaoran an exclamation. The cliff wall - and the balcony - ran all the way around in front of them and curved back to meet them on the other side, a closed-off ring of stone open to the sky. Here and there along the balcony they saw platforms leaning out into the open space below, accompanied by carved flights of stairs leaning down to the arena floor.

They were in the caldera itself - the very heart of the mountain temple.

Their guide turned to the left and paced along the edge of the stone balcony, leading them down what turned out to be a complicated interlacing set of pyramids that made up the stairs, then headed purposefully to the center of the ring. As they did Mokona uttered a cry, her ears pointing straight up and quivering as her eyes opened wide.

"Mekyo!" she chirped. "It's here! Sakura's feather!"

The stone floor of the arena was raised in shallow, broad steps in concentric rings narrowing in to the center; at the center was a raised dais, and upon that a square stone slab as broad on each side as a man was tall. Something about that stone slab made the hair on the back of Fai's neck rise, and he grabbed Syaoran by the shoulder when the younger man would have rushed forward to claim the feather. Syaoran stopped, looking back over his shoulder at Fai in question; but Fai only shook his head.

It was Sakura's feather without question; he could feel the bright, clean sensation of the feather's magic washing over them even from his distance. But underneath that was something _old,_ something dark and tainted, generation after generation of darkness that had washed these stones and poured into the darkness beneath. The sound of their footsteps changed when they stepped onto the last few stone rings, a muffled echo sounding from below their boots - and although Fai's sense of direction was not as good as Syaoran's, he suddenly knew with crystal-clear certainty that they were positioned directly over the chamber that housed the careless refuse of bones. It would be easy and convenient, from here, to pour out the lifeblood of an intended sacrifice, then let their body fall to the pit below...

None of the others seemed to have made the connection, thankfully; Sakura was staring at the feather where it rested innocently in a small coffer, propped open. The Beast paced in a half-circle around the other side of the altar, seeming reluctant to step onto the center dais. He didn't _seem_ to have dragged them out here for some sacrificial ritual, which could only be a mercy, but then what was this about?

 **"This was what you really came for, wasn't it?"** He jerked his massive head in the direction of Fai, standing frozen a few strides away. **"Not for your brother."**

Fai couldn't think of anything to say that wouldn't make the matter worse, so he said nothing.

"...Yes." Syaoran stepped into the breach, thankfully, taking control of the conversation as he always did when the fate of Sakura's feather was at stake. His eyes were clear and his voice unwavering; there was sadness and regret in his tone, but no sliver of doubt. "It belongs to the Princess. It's her memory, and it was scattered long ago. I know it's precious to your people, but -"

 **"Take it."** The Beast sat down, ceasing in his restless pacing with his haunches folded under him.

Sakura stared at him, wide-eyed. "R-really?" she stuttered.

 **"Yeah,"** the Beast said.

The travelers hesitated, confused by how quickly the situation had untangled for them. "But... you swore an oath, didn't you?" Syaoran said with a frown. It was clear he had trouble understanding how Kurogane, any Kurogane, would so easily forsake an oath. "To protect the temple and its treasures? You made a vow to your priestess -"

 **"Yes, and** ** _she did THIS TO ME!"_** The Beast uncoiled to his feet, claws raking deep gouges in the stone below. Every muscle shook visibly with furious energy - the need to lash out, to rend and destroy - and his face contorted in grief and pain, bitterness and hate that ran years and fathoms deep. The travelers froze in place - Syaoran pulled Sakura slightly behind him and she went, clutching Mokona with wide eyes. Fai touched his tongue to the back of his teeth, wondering if there was any spell he could speak now that would not attract the attention -

The tableau hung for a long moment, and then the Beast slowly eased back to the floor, and the travelers nearly melted with relief. **"Everything Orusta foresaw,"** the Beast said, his voice now almost back to normal. **"The empty town, the ruined temple. There's no point to trying to prevent the prophecy because it all came true anyway. There's nothing left to protect.**

**"So now this just sits here. It's not doing anybody any good. Thieves will just keep coming after it and I'll keep killing them. Enough. Enough already."**

"Thank you," Fai said softly into the tense atmosphere. "That's very generous of you."

The Beast glanced at him once, then looked away. **"Yuui thought that this feather could be used for healing. He thought it could cure - "** His tail lashed once, then rested. **"Well. He thought lots of things. He wouldn't have wanted it to rot in the dark and neither do I. So take it."**

Mokona cheered, looking elated. Syaoran mostly looked relieved that they weren't going to have to fight the Beast again (or rather, _try.)_ Sakura, on the other hand, looked as though she were going to cry.

"But, what will happen to you?" she piped up, even as Syaoran stepped forward and gingerly lifted the coffer from the altar. He moved towards Sakura, reaching to restore the feather to her, but Sakura took a small step away and shook her head. Clearly, there was something she wanted to stay awake for. "After we leave. When the thing that you lived to protect is gone. What will become of you?"

 **"Nothing,"** the Beast said flatly. His massive ruff raised in what was almost a shrug. **"I don't think anyone's gonna believe that the treasure isn't here any more. They'll still come looking for it. I'll still kill them."** He paused, eyes half-lidded, staring into the distance. **"Maybe someday one will come who's strong enough to take me down. But I'm not in a hurry to do their work for them."**

 **"Now unless you're planning to move in here permanently, you should go."** The Beast turned away, that fast-sliding motion, and paced towards the edge of the arena.

The travelers gathered together near the center of the stone rings, the lines of the temple radiating out around them. Fai stared around the grim stone walls and imagined a lifetime of being surrounded by them, alone, having nothing to live for, just waiting for someone to come and put an end to it - someone who might never come. It was all too easy to imagine.

There was nothing they could do. They couldn't save everyone, and the Beast had made his own choice. _The wrong choice,_ Fai's conscience insisted at him, but what could he do?

The hardest part of it, the part that sat like a lead ball in his stomach, was that Fai couldn't even ask _why_ the Beast had chosen as he did - because he already knew the answer. He could almost see through that black hide to the bones and tendons beneath, see into the distorted skull to the mass of pain brooding beneath. Of old, old agony that you feared to let go of because without that, who were you? Of choices that were not really choices, of choosing misery just in order to feel like you could _choose_ at all.

_But it's the wrong choice._

Mokona's circle rose around them with a whisper of magic, the edges of the world pinching and thinning as Mokona prepared to draw the fabric of reality around them again. On a sudden impulse Fai stepped forward, reaching out towards the Beast once more. "Wait," he said.

Red eyes looked back at him with a guarded, impassive expression as Fai stepped closer, closer than he'd been since the first time the Beast had slammed him against the wall - close enough for that row of jagged fangs to bite his arm off at the elbow. Heedless of the danger he stepped further in still, until he could wrap his hands around the Beast's massive, furred head. In those eyes he saw his own reflection, years and years gone, a life of promises and possibilities all gone to ruin. There was nothing, Fai knew, that could bring that back. There was nothing that he could be, or do, that could undo the past and bring it to life again.

"I don't really believe in granting wishes," he said aloud, knowing that Sakura and Syaoran could hear his words, were watching him with intense worry. "But I do believe in starting over."

And he leaned forward and kissed the Beast; and as he did so, his lips closed on the loose thread of magic and _pulled._

One of Fai's early tutors in magic (back when he'd been too young to understand it on a more abstract conceptual level) had compared magic to weaving, or knitting. In order to knit a sweater or a scarf in the first place, the man had said, you needed the right tools - like knitting needles - the right materials - like yarn - and you also had to have the skill to knit them together and the time to create the fabric bit by bit.

But once that sweater was complete, he'd gone on to say, none of those things were required at all to _unmake_ it. All it took was an understanding of how the weave was put together, and the knowledge of where to look to find the weak points. And if you could find that weak point, if you could grasp it and pull, then the entire spell would unravel.

The massive hulking form of the Beast lit up with a weird, red-black glow that left purple spots in front of Fai's eyes as he backed away, blinking. He stepped over the threshold of Mokona's spell and felt it take him, the transport magic rising to completion.

A massive bellow echoed throughout the labyrinth, transmuting in the middle to a hoarse human cry. The last thing any of them saw before the golden tunnel enfolded them was a tall, rangy man with iron-grey hair and line-scored skin falling to his knees in the courtyard, blinking at them through stunned crimson eyes.

* * *

~tbc...


	13. Firelands III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The travelers come home.

Kurogane had absolutely no intention of doing any chores for the Witch. It infuriated him how the Time-Space Witch never passed up an opportunity to worm further payment out of them, since as far as Kurogane was concerned he'd already paid his due (and unlike the other three nuts, he'd _never_ asked to come on this journey in the first place.) So, he figured, since she wasn't providing any additional service or gift for them, there was absolutely no reason he should submit to sweeping rocks and chopping firewood like a first-year student. He meant to spend the time tending to his equipment, practicing his swordsmanship, and training.

His schedule hit a hitch in the evening of the first day around dinner-time, when he realized he had no way of providing food for himself except for the Witch's so-called hospitality. Her smug attitude versus Kurogane's grouchiness resulted in a roof-raising squabble that was only ended when the Witch's apprentice, Watanuki, stormed out onto the front porch, yanked Yuuko's glass of iced tea away from her and upended it on Kurogane instead, yelling that if they were going to act like two-year-olds they'd get treated like it. Kurogane retreated to the empty part of the shop in a high sulk, listening to Yuuko complain loudly about her lost tea.

All of that night and the next day Kurogane still refused to cave. Stubbornness might have compelled Kurogane to hold out for the rest of his companions' absence - he'd gone hungry for days at a time before, after all, while on hunting missions in the border province - but by nightfall of the following day Kurogane realized that Yuuko controlled the only supply not only of food, but of booze.

A second confrontation, slightly less heated, finally ended with the two parties hammering out terms: Kurogane refused to do menial chores like washing dishes or scrubbing clothes, but he _would_ condescend to help out with any structural repairs that needed doing around the place - slipped roof tiles, broken doorframes, and the like.

Of course, no sooner had Kurogane made this agreement than the entire shop seemed to age a hundred years in the space of an hour; screens tore, faucets sprung leaks, cold wind began blowing in around uncaulked window frames and moaning through holes in the roof.

Kurogane spent the rest of the next day on his hands and knees on the roof, quietly cursing the Witch with every pound of his hammer. But at least it kept his mind off his missing friends.

The others were gone for five days. Not that Kurogane was keeping count or anything. He knew better, after the Shara country debacle, than to think that time passed at the same rate in every world - and the Witch had said that this shop was in its own world, too. There was simply no way to know, until they returned, how much time had really passed for them; they could be gone a day, a week, or a month.

Not that it mattered whether they were gone for two days or a fortnight. There was nothing he could do from here to help them, no matter what kind of trouble they got into. He didn't even have any way of knowing what was going on with them, let alone reaching them - even the Time-Space Witch required Mokona to travel. And there was simply _no_ way that he was going to beg additional favors, or pay additional prices - from her.

There was nothing to do now but wait. He would just have to trust in them; trust the kid to remember his training, trust the wizard to weasel their way out of any sticky situations involving magic, and trust the princess and the pork bun to hold their hearts together in the meantime. There was no reason to worry.

There was no reason to worry.

No reason at all.

So Kurogane didn't count the days as they passed by in the shop, didn't mark each hour as it struck a deep gong on the huge garishly decorated clock in the storeroom. He passed the time by meditating, or maintaining his equipment, or training in the back yard by the koi pond. And if that just happened to be the closest place to where they would come back, well, it was the only open space that was suitable, that was all.

So it wasn't really luck that Kurogane was out in the courtyard when his companions returned - there was more planning to it than that. But it was certainly fortuitous.

He had his eyes closed when it began, a wash of colored sparks across the darkness of his eyelids, and he halted in the middle of his drill and turned to watch as the air warped and twisted and the sky bulged downwards to touch the earth. Kurogane tensed with his hands on the hilt of his sword as dust and smoke were blown away from the point of impact, unconsciously prepared to fight off any assailant who might be pursuing them. A ridiculous thought, since he knew perfectly well that no one had ever been able to follow them across worlds before, but it was a habit from his ninja days that he'd never quite been able to shake when one of his men had been coming in hot.

When the smoke cleared, Kurogane relaxed to see that the way was clear behind them; he did a quick head-count and saw that all was well. One tall and blond, two short, one red and one brown, and the little white bobble of the meat-bun nestled in Sakura's arms. The next moment, Sakura had thrown herself on Fai with a shriek of joy.

"Oh Fai-san, thank you, thank you!" she babbled, hugging the blond man tightly. It was almost comic the way she barely came up to his shoulder, hair included, and yet even such a tiny slip of a girl was able to pin Fai with a grip like an anaconda. "You did it! You saved him, you really did it!"

Fai attempted to detangle himself from Sakura's arms, with limited success. "Now, Sakura-chan, I didn't really do all that much - " he began.

"But you did!" Sakura turned wide, shining green eyes on on Fai, and gave him another squeeze for good measure. "I don't care what you call it, you _did_ break the curse that was on him and now he has another chance, he can leave that horrible place and not be so alone anymore and -"

Fai shot a guilty, fleeting glance at Kurogane over Sakura's head, and Kurogane stiffened in response as though that quick glance had been a dart. He didn't have to ask who 'he' was in this context or why it should make Fai and Syaoran look at him so strangely - he wasn't an idiot. Honestly, after all three of the previous worlds had resulted in them running into doubles of themselves within a few hours of their arrival, he could venture a pretty confident guess.

But that was much less important than the _other_ thing Sakura had let slip. "You did _what? "_

"Syaoran-kun," Fai said loudly, interrupting Sakura's happy stream of babble before she could say anything more. "You still have Sakura-chan's feather, don't you? Perhaps you should return it to her before anything else goes wrong?"

"Oh, yes!" Syaoran exclaimed, immediately and effectively diverted from whatever he'd been about to say.

This tactic was a more than effective diversion - a little too effective, in fact, since in less than a minute's time the two teenagers were wrapped up in their own little world. Sakura, as usual when a feather was returned, swayed and closed her eyes as sleepiness overtook her, and Syaoran had eyes only for her as he caught her and lowered her gently in his arms to the ground. Neither of them objected - or, indeed noticed - when Kurogane caught Fai by the arm in a practiced come-along hold that was much more effective than it looked, and propelled him into a nearby alcove where they could speak in private.

He'd had this little speech planned out for days (if not weeks) for the next time he got the mage alone. He wouldn't grill him in front of the kids - it would distress them unnecessarily, and Fai was even less likely than usual to answer if he had an audience. But sooner or later, Fai wouldn't be able to dodge him anymore, and Kurogane would have an opportunity to pin him with all the questions that had been piling up since this adventure began. Who was Fai running from? Why, _really_ why, did Fai refuse to work magic even under dire circumstances? Who was it they had met, in the world with the trickster kid, who looked and sounded just like Fai and yet could not possibly have been his double? _Who are you, really?_

He meant to get answers. He _needed_ to get answers for all of their sakes; they were up against a big blank of nothing where Fai's past was concerned and the last thing he wanted was for it to ambush them at an inconvenient time. Without proper knowledge, they could not plan proper action; this time it was Fai's look-a-like who had surprised them on that world, and nothing too bad had come of it, but what about next time?

He meant to get answers if only so he could tell Fai how much he didn't care - that he'd meant it when he told Fai that whatever business was in his past had nothing to do with the rest of them. Whatever Fai had done - whoever he'd been - if he'd killed someone or stolen someone else's face and name and magic (as was Kurogane's leading theory) Kurogane didn't care. If the last four worlds had taught Kurogane anything, it was that whatever you _could have been_ in some other life, some other time didn't change a thing. All that mattered was the person you were _here_ and _now_ , and _here and now_ Fai was their companion, protector and friend.

He'd planned to say all that, so it was completely Sakura's fault - and as much of a surprise to himself as it was to Fai - when his mouth opened and what actually came out was _"You can break curses?"_

Fai, unsurprisingly, immediately began to hedge. "Now, Kuro-tan, it's not what you think. It wasn't a counter-spell or anything like that. I didn't actually _use_ any magic; it's completely different if you just happen to sense some weak points in the spell and push them, just like when you broke through the wall in Koryo -"

Kurogane brushed all this aside impatiently. Whatever tricky semantics Fai used to justify to himself that he wasn't really breaking his promise, it didn't matter to anyone but him. "That's not what's important here! What's important is _you can break curses._ So break mine!"

Fai opened his mouth to start to speak, then closed it again and stared at Kurogane. "Wait, what? Yours? You have a curse on you, Kuro-sama?"

"Yes!" Kurogane reached up and swept the headband off his forehead, baring the seal to the air for the first time in all the time they'd been traveling. "The Tsukuyomi put a curse on me right before she sent me away from Nihon. I can't kill anyone or it will lessen my strength. What kind of wizard are you that you haven't noticed it in all this time?"

Fai only stared harder, looking at Kurogane as though Mokona had gone out of their range and they were speaking gibberish to each other again. "A curse?" he repeated, sounding disbelieving? "She told you it was a _curse?"_

"Yes!" Kurogane snarled. "Why d'you think I was so careful not to kill anyone in Yama country? It was a pain in the fucking ass, too. It's a huge liability if I can't use my full strength in a fight. We're just lucky we haven't been in a situation where it was necessary before, or else we'd really be in trouble, so take it off already!"

"And _she_ told you it was a _curse?"_ Fai repeated again, and Kurogane began to lose his temper.

"Are you deaf?" he roared. "Changing the emphasis on the question isn't going to change the answer, dammit! Yes, she told me when she put it on me that it was a curse, to teach me to control my strength! Now break it already!"

Fai hadn't stopped staring at him in astonishment the whole time, and it seemed to take him a couple tries to find his voice. "Well," he said, and cleared his throat. "...I really don't think I should interfere with another sorcerer's work that way. Tomoyo-chan might get upset with me, and I'd hate to get off on the wrong foot with her if we were ever to meet."

 _"Gah!"_ Letting out a noise of utter disgust, Kurogane whirled around and stomped off down the corridor. Stupid fucking useless wizards, always banding together!

That was a shallow excuse, of course, like all of Fai's were - but that didn't mean Fai was going to be any less recalcitrant about it. In his own twisty, slippery way, Fai could be as stubborn as a mule - chasing him through one flimsy pretext after another was just as exhausting as slamming your head against one single brick wall. Fai must have some reasons for not wanting to remove the curse, as incomprehensible to Kurogane as they might be. Was he afraid that if Kurogane were unfettered, he would immediately go on a killing rampage at the first opportunity? Let the kid and the princess see him as a murdering beast? Did Fai really think that little of him?

A faint, rhythmic noise from somewhere deeper in the shop caught his attention. Kurogane's hearing, like his other senses, was unnaturally sharp - he could usually pick out details of sounds from quite a distance away, even with walls or other obstacles in the way. Normally, he was able to filter out the mundane background noises of most of the locations they came to: people talking, animals such as dogs or horses snuffling and panting, the mechanical growl of the autocars in 'techno' worlds they came to. In the past few days at the Witch's shop he'd become attuned to and thus filtered out the creaks and squeaks and occasional faint unsettling humming.

This noise was a new one, a sort of rhythmic tapping or hammering like the busy noise of a distant forge. It was too regular to be caused by the wind, or a tree limb banging against a window, and too faint (and persistent) to be someone knocking on the front door for entry. It was not a particularly threatening noise, but it was enough to nag at him, leaving him increasingly annoyed and restless. He set off to find the source of the tapping noise, trying to trace it to the source.

After several minutes of searching (and several more of backtracking - the acoustics of this shop were confusing as hell sometimes) Kurogane heard the tapping sound grow louder as he approached a cross-corridor up ahead. He recognized this area of the shop from his restless patrols over the past few days; it was a mostly-empty, little-used set of storage rooms beyond the wall ahead, and the hallway to the left dead-ended after only a few yards. In a real, traditional Japanese house in a real, non-ridiculous dimension it would have lead out into a back alley behind the mansion, suitable for servants to accept deliveries or take out trash. This being a magical unreal sham of a house, of course, it ended in a blank wall. Large panels of mirrored glass created the illusion of a deeper space (as well as confusing any residents; no doubt Yuuko thought it was absolutely hilarious when some unsuspecting guest _walked smack into it and was knocked on their ass. )_

Kurogane turned left at the intersection, then ground to a halt and stared; standing in the dimly-lit cul-de-sac and waving amiably at him was Fai.

Except -

He was standing _behind_ the glass.

Kurogane saw his own reflection on the mirrored wall and did a double-take, checking behind him even though he _knew_ damn well there was nothing there; he would have felt Fai's presence long before he came up behind him. The space behind him was empty; Fai only appeared in the mirror.

And he wasn't in shadow, either. The color of his eyes was a little bit too deep a blue, his hair a little too bright a gold. His traveling outfit of lavender and grey was one that Kurogane had never seen before. And when he turned his head a little bit to smile at Kurogane, a long blond braid swung behind him, nearly brushing the floor.

The Wizard Fane completed his happy wave, then returned to tapping his long fingers on the glass, producing the rhythmic noise that had brought Kurogane here. All at once he reared back, his hand bunching into a fist, and slammed his fist into the wall of glass hard enough to leave a spiderweb of cracks.

Kurogane didn't mean to shout, but a startled yell echoed in his ears as he leapt backwards into a crouch, hand flying to the hilt of his sword - even though he had no idea what he was supposed to _do_ with it. Fane slammed against the mirror again, spreading the cracks even further, and for a moment Kurogane was certain that the glass was going to shatter, letting Fane into this world.

The glass held, though, and Fane apparently decided to switch tactics; he raised one hand over his head and traced his forefinger against the glass, a white glowing line following the motion as he swept it out and down in a wide, smooth circle. Once the circle was complete, a brilliant ring of white against the back of the mirror, Fane began to quickly and efficiently inscribe runes along the inside of the circumference. Kurogane was no magician himself, but he'd seen those runes and that circle enough times by now to recognize them - it was Mokona's magical world-traveling circle.

 _He followed us!_ The incredibly obvious realization kept racing through Kurogane's head over and over, replaying on a loop of paralyzed stupidity. He should have guessed, he should have _known_ something like this would happen - someday - they'd gotten too used to the idea that the dimensional barriers were unbreachable, inviolable except by themselves. That all they had to do to run away from trouble, to evade any pursuer, was step away from that world, and they could follow them no more.

But not this one. Fane was too damn strong, too powerful a wizard to be left behind so easily. Kurogane ought to have remembered - at the beginning of their journey, Fai had been the only one with enough magic to transport _himself_ to the Witch's world, instead of being sent by another. Of course if anyone could follow them across the boundaries of the universe, it would be another Fai.

Before the travelers had come to his world Fane hadn't realized that there _were_ other worlds - they'd been the ones to teach him that, to let him loose. He could have only seen Mokona's circle for a brief, agonized moment while they fell from the castle in the air, but apparently that one look had been all he'd needed.

What could Kurogane do? He'd stabbed Fane through the chest once and it hadn't even fazed him. If he swung his sword now, all he'd accomplish would be to make Fane's job easier as he shattered the glass keeping him out. But if he did nothing, the Fane would finish the circle and come through anyway - he was already one-quarter done drawing the circle and continuing with astonishing speed. And once Fane came through the mirror into this world...

The Witch's warning echoed in his ears, cool and dire: _"It is impossible for two people with the same soul to be in a world at the same time. If you were to try to enter that world, both of you would instantly die."_

"Kurogane-san? What's happening?" a familiar breathless voice called out, followed by the light patter of footsteps. Kurogane didn't alter his stance or take his gaze from Fane, but he saw them in the mirror as Syaoran rushed into the hallway holding Mokona in his arms, and then stopped with his mouth hanging open in an O of dismay.

He didn't answer; he didn't like stating the obvious and there was no need, anyway, when the answer was staring them right in the face. Besides, he didn't want to announce to the whole _shop_ and a certain blond magician that his evil twin was -

"Is there a problem?" All Kurogane's attempt at discretion was ruined a moment later when Fai himself rounded the corner and stopped dead.

His blue eyes grew wide as he took in the sight beyond the mirror - the man in the dove-gray traveling suit, so different from his, busily copying Mokona's runes into a glowing circle. He gulped for a breath of air, and let it out in a weak, anticlimactic little "oh."

"That's Mokona's circle!" Mokona chirped, not sharing Kurogane's dislike for stating the obvious. "And Wizard Fane, from the world with the flying castle!"

"But what is he _doing_ here?" Syaoran exclaimed in dismay.

"Apparently he didn't much feel like staying put in his own world," Kurogane growled. "I don't know how he got our scent but he must have been following us from the last world."

"But he can't!" Mokona wailed, wringing her paws. "If Fane comes through, Fai will die!"

"Yuuko-san!" Syaoran called out, wheeling around and looking everywhere as though the Witch might be lurking behind one of the paneled walls. "Please! Can't you stop him from coming through? It's _your_ world, isn't it?"

The Witch's image appeared in the mirror, hazily, beside Fane's. It was obviously only an image, flat and off-colored, unlike Fane's all-too real and solid body. "This world is indeed mine, but that means that it is bound by certain rules, as I am," she said solemnly. "I am sorry, but I cannot stand against a wish so powerful."

"What good are you, then?" Kurogane demanded. He didn't get why she was projecting an image instead of just coming to see them in person. She'd not bothered to avoid him for all the five days that he'd been staying here, so why did she pick _now_ of all times to refuse to show her face?

The Witch's face grew masked, withdrawn. "Sometimes I wonder," she murmured, so low that Kurogane didn't think they'd been meant to hear. After a moment she added, "Either way, there can be no price for something you already own."

"What do you mean?" Syaoran said anxiously.

Yuuko glanced knowingly towards Fai, who avoided her gaze. "There is one among you who already has the ability that you need." With that, her visage vanished from the mirror.

"Fai," Syaoran exclaimed, then bounded over to the older man's side, as excited as a puppy. "Fai, _you_ can stop him, can't you?"

"Yes!" Mokona cried. "Just like the feather, just like with the Beast! All you have to do is unravel the spell!"

Fai didn't answer, his eyes still tracking his double's. The spell-circle was more than two-thirds complete now.

"Wizard?" Kurogane growled, every muscle taut.

"Fai, you _have_ to," Syaoran exclaimed. "If the other you comes into this world, both of you will _die._ He'll die too! Isn't he a wizard too, doesn't he realize? Can't we make him understand that?"

"The question isn't whether he understands," Fai said unexpectedly. He walked forward like one in a dream, keeping his eyes fixed on Fane, and stopped before his reflection in the mirror. "The question is, does he _care._ "

"What do you mean by that?" Kurogane demanded. How Fai could speak with such certainty about the thought process of someone he hadn't even known existed until five minutes ago, Kurogane didn't even want to know.

"He'd rather die than be alone again," Fai said simply. Quietly he added, "I know what that's like."

"Then he'll be alone in death," Kurogane snarled. "How's that better?"

"Not necessarily," Fai murmured. His eyes were sad, and thousands of miles away.

"Well, if he wants to die, he can damn well go fall on his sword somewhere!" Kurogane said furiously. "Doesn't give him the right to take anyone else with him!"

Fai said nothing. The wizard Fane kept on with his deadly work tirelessly, without remorse. Kurogane knew the sigil well - he'd seen it enough times by now, after all - and he could tell that it was nearly three-fourths complete. He ground his teeth, hand flexing on his useless sword. If he struck as soon as Fane moved, could he kill him fast enough to save Fai? But no - 'Instantly,' the Witch had said, and he doubted she was exaggerating. He hadn't felt so helpless in years - not since he'd watched an arm with a bat motif stretch out from a hole in the universe. This wasn't a problem that could be solved by _hitting things,_ unless there was some way to hit some _sense_ into Fai's _fat head -_

"And you!" Kurogane said. He reached out as if to grab Fai's arm, drag him around and force him to look Kurogane in the eye, but his hand hesitated and then fell away. "Come on! You still have something that you need to do, don't you?"

"Fai-san," Syaoran said, hesitant and unsure. "You said you know what he feels like, to be so alone you want to die. But you - you're _not_ alone."

He reached out and took hold of Fai's hand, holding Mokona cradled in his other arm. "You have us - me and Kurogane-san and Mokona and the Princess." He reached out and took hold of Kurogane's sleeve with his other hand, linking them together - and Kurogane allowed it, even though it blocked his sword arm. "And we need you."

"Fai..." Mokona said pitifully, creeping out along Syaoran's arm like a bridge to tug on the edge of Fai's sleeve. "Please, if there's something you can do, then do it!"

Fai looked down at Mokona, and a wry smile quirked his mouth. "Well, maybe you have a point," he murmured, although it was unclear who he was addressing - Mokona or Syaoran or Kurogane himself. Without releasing Syaoran's hand he took a step forward, eyes locking with his double's, and reached out to touch the glass.

As if mesmerized, on the other side of the glass, Fane did the same. For a moment they truly mirrored each other, palms flat against each other with only the glass between them. Then Fai shifted his weight, his hand moving momentarily _into_ the glass -

There was a bright flash, a sound like cracking ice, and a high-pitched cry of desolation. For a moment Kurogane was blinded, his eyes dazzled even behind his tight-shut lids - when he opened his eyes again, the mirror was an empty sheet of blackness. Fane was gone.

Kurogane sucked in his breath. "What'd you do?" he said. For a moment he feared - or hoped, he wasn't sure - that Fane was dead, that Fai had killed him and removed him as a menace once and for all.

"I turned the spell back on him," Fai said, his voice flat. "He won't be able to use it again. Now he's sealed in there - the last world he came through. Forever."

Syaoran's face was pale as a sheet, but he didn't hesitate - he crowded close to Fai and tugged on Kurogane's sleeve to pull him closer, until he could throw his arms around both of them at once. Fai returned the embrace, ducking his head and hiding his eyes, and Kurogane decided to hell with it; he left Souhi back in her sheath and wrapped his strong arms around both of them.

After a long moment, Syaoran gave Fai an encouraging squeeze. "It was the right thing to do, Fai-san," he said firmly, although his voice lacked a certain conviction. "Where there's life there's hope, they say. So long as he lives, he still has a chance."

"You're too kind, Syaoran-kun. Thank you for trying," Fai said. His smile was crimped around the edges, and his voice was thick with bitterness. "But we all know that I didn't do it for _his_ sake. When it comes down to it, I'm just selfish."

"Selfishness is the human condition," a deep, rich voice rolled out from the walls. Instantly Kurogane recognized the voice of the Space-Time Witch, but for once neither she nor her image were anywhere in sight. The words seem to come from nowhere, from everywhere, echoing down through the vaults of time as though the voice itself were a treasure to be stored in the deep recesses of the shop. "But selfishness is not always evil. When you love another person, your selfishness is not only for your own needs and wants, but also for theirs. You can be greedy for their happiness, jealous of things that would harm them. That is nothing to be ashamed of.

"So long as humans live, they will hurt each other," Yuuko's voice continued. "That is inevitable, when so many different wills and wishes collide in the chaos of everyday living. There must always be a balance. The wants of one must always be balanced against the needs of another. The idea that you can go through life without ever causing pain to another is folly. There are some people that, no matter how much your heart breaks for them, it is simply not in your power to save. Look instead to those who love you, and focus your mind on the ways to help them, instead. And by helping yourself, help them."

The Witch's voice dropped into a whisper, then silence - a silence so close to holy that none of the travelers wanted to be the first to break it.

* * *

Sakura slept the rest of the morning and afternoon, only to wake in the evening. Unsurprisingly, as she had missed both breakfast and lunch, she woke hungry. The travelers decided to eat one last meal in the shop and spend the night before they moved on.

Dinner was provided by Yuuko's apprentice Watanuki, who seized a portion of the meal in a bento box to carry away to his ladyfriend Himawari, leaving the travelers to themselves. The conversation was surprisingly awkward; they all wanted to talk about the things they had seen in the past few worlds, but none of them really wanted to say too much about the double selves of the others - and with all of them present, that severely limited the topics they could safely talk about. Syaoran had resorted to describing the fantastic underwater city to Sakura, while skillfully avoiding the subject of the mermaid princess Tideflower. Much more interesting to Kurogane was the description of the fiery mountain which had filled the sky with ash and smoke from the last world (Mokona was helpfully filling in the story with appropriate sound effects whenever the telling got dull.)

When the conversation hit a natural lull, Fai turned to Mokona. "Are there any more worlds like that, Mokona?" he asked. "Worlds that contain doubles of us, which we can't enter without leaving anybody behind?"

Mokona shook her head, sending her white ears flying. "Nope! Mokona kept track of all the worlds we tried to get into and couldn't," she said cheerfully. "That's all the missing worlds!"

"Everything's back to normal, I suppose," Syaoran said, with a slightly relieved expression. "It feels like a whole year's gone by in the past few weeks!"

Sakura sighed dreamily. "To me it feels like waking up from a dream - or a fairytale," she said.

"Strange..." Fai murmured, his blue eyes cloudy. "To me it felt like letting go of something."

Kurogane stabbed his chopsticks into a manjuu without comment. Personally, he was all too glad to see the back of all these evil twins; he was getting tired of running into versions of themselves that were animals. Or criminals. Or murderers.

"It's been restful to have a little vacation at the shop, though," Sakura said wistfully. "Don't you sometimes wish that we could stay here?"

It was half-jesting, half-serious, but the others all shook their heads solemnly. "No, Princess," Syaoran said. "If we wanted to stop there were many other places we could have stayed, but we must keep on going."

"I still have to get home," Kurogane reminded them. Tied up in the kids' problems he might be, but he definitely hadn't lost sight of his ultimate goal to the extent of actually wanting to settle down anywhere else.

"And I still must travel away from home," Fai said lightly.

"I made a promise to retrieve all of your memory feathers, and I mean to keep that promise," Syaoran told Sakura with a hint of fierceness. "How could I stop halfway? You are so much stronger, so much more full of life each time you get one."

Sakura sighed deeply, but nodded a little bit in agreement. "I guess you're right," she said. "There's still so much that I'm missing, that I don't even know is missing. And besides, it just wouldn't be right to leave powerful things like my feathers floating around in all the other worlds, where the wrong people could get hold of them and do so much harm."

Frankly, in Kurogane's opinion, people who meant to do great harm would find a way to do so whether they got a magical wish-granting feather or not. Still - she wasn't wrong.

"And I did miss it being the five of us," Sakura added after a moment, brightening up. "We're so much stronger when we're all together, aren't we?"

"Sure," Kurogane grunted without looking up, the most of his emotion that he would allow to show through.

"Of course!" Syaoran said. "If the past few weeks have taught us anything, it's that. We all have things that we bring that nobody else can offer - and when one of us is missing, everything is harder. I'm glad we won't have to put up with any more of that."

"We won't be together forever, you know," Fai reminded them gently. "Someday, whether we like it or not, the time will come when we'll have to go our separate ways."

"I suppose so," Syaoran said regretfully. "But then, that means that we should make the most of the time we have!"

"You got that right!" Mokona cheered, jumping into the middle of their table with a sake dish raised high. "To togetherness! Kanpai!"

Smiling at Mokona's exuberance, they drank.

* * *

~end.


	14. Epilogue

The wind blew from west to east, pushing the heavy billowing clouds of smoke and ash before it. To the east, far on the distant shores of the wine-dark sea, lay the sprawling empires of Xerxes and the even more mysterious lands beyond. To the east lay war and fire, cities and politics and man preying endlessly on man. To the west lay the great expanses of wilderness, mountains and pristine forests inhabited only by beasts and barbarian tribes.

He set his face to the wind, and walked.

It was clear to him now - should have been obvious from the start, really - that the travelers were not who they'd claimed to be. They were no citizens of Xerxes, the tall blond had been no brother of any man in this world. He ought to have known that right away - too many years had passed for any brother of Yuisha's to still look so young - but his easy knowledge of things no man ought to have known had lulled his suspicions. And stirred his hope.

Who - or what - had they been, truly? Sorcerers, trickster spirits, gods in mortal guise come to claim back their treasure? Whatever they were, he didn't know and didn't want to know. The secret treasure of Akros - his great oath, his long burden - was out of his hands forever.

It had taken three days for him to leave the temple. What drove him out in the end was not hunger - over the years he had grown accustomed to ignoring pangs of near-starvation, since he couldn't truly be harmed by them - but cold. It was still winter and the chill had settled into the bones of the underground temple, cold drafts wending their way through the stone labyrinth walls.

There was nothing left in the temple that he could use for a cloak, so on the third day as the temperatures began to drop he crept out of the temple's lower entrances into the ruined town. Very little had changed since the last time he had ventured out of the temple, except that the stones were even more broken-down by time; even the weeds straggling up between the paving-stones slept with the winter season, leaving a landscape utterly devoid of life.

Most of the contents of the houses had also withered away, and he was forced to search an increasing distance from the center of the town to find the less-ruined buildings which had withstood the elements. In one small but sturdy house in the lowest terrace he found a cache of sturdy men's clothing, trousers and chiton with a heavy wool clook on the outside. He happened to glance up as he fastened the cloak across his breast, and realized he was but steps away from the town's outer limit.

At that point, it seemed stupid to do anything but keep going.

No one saw him leaving Akros, or paid him more than a glance when he joined the road that snaked along the base of the mountains. No one cried out or raised a fuss when he stopped at a waystation a day's march north to purchase some food and traveling gear. He had some money, taken from the purses of the fallen adventurers who had sought to slay him - not much, since rich men tended not to risk their lives seeking cursed treasures in the first place, but he had copper enough. A sword that had outlived its former owner helped ensure that no one thought it worth the effort to relieve him of it.

No one took any notice of him at all, just another weathered old traveler making one last pilgrimage in the winter of his life.

Winter in more than one way. The mysterious traveler had restored his human body to him, but nothing could restore his lost youth. His hair, where he had drawn it over his shoulder and cut it with a sword before tying it back with a thong, was riddled with frosted grey. His hands were withered and sunken with age, but they still grip the hilt of his sword with strength enough, so what did it matter what they look like? His eyes were clouded and blurred, but so what? He could still see the sun and the sky and the road, could tell a rock from a tree or a building, could see the movement of a beast or a man heading his way; how important was it really to be able to read the fine detail on signs or pick out individual features of people's faces?

He kept walking.

As he traveled away from the tame lands surrounding the city-states and further into the wild lands, the towns became fewer, smaller. Where before he could have passed half a dozen little towns in a day, now noon to night could pass without him crossing even one. The roads were still maintained, though, by the legions that patrolled them, and every now and then he passed a _lesche_ set back in the field by the road, waiting to shelter weary travelers at night.

Out here in the wilds, where wolves and bears were a danger, the open sides of the _lesche_ were built up with stout timbers along the bottom halves; the structure was almost like a proper house, but that the walls were wood instead of stone. Still, it was a roof over his head for the night and that was enough.

The sun had been glaring in his eyes as it set, so it took his vision a moment to adjust when he came in to the darkness of the _lesche,_ and even then he could make out only mostly blurred blobs and shadows. Still, he sensed the presence of the other man even without seeing him, and so it was no surprise to him when a pale silhouette stirred from the corner of the lesche and quickly stood up when he entered. "Oh - I'm sorry," the stranger said. "I didn't realize - I didn't realize anyone lived here."

That earned the stranger an odd look; his vision was too dim and cloudy to make out more than a vague outline, a tall figure wrapped in a gray traveling cloak. The voice was definitely male, not female - good, there need be no worry about propriety of sharing a roof then. "No one does," he said, setting aside his traveling pack and cloak as he entered the _lesche,_ as was proper. He ought to have set aside his weapon as well, strictly speaking, but he didn't care _that_ much about propriety as to leave himself unarmed in the company of strangers.

"This isn't your house, then?" the stranger asked, sounding anxious. He must be a stranger, perhaps a barbarian from the lands further west, if he did not know the most basic of civilized customs. Still, if he was planning to spend his last days among such barbarians, he would have to make at least an effort to get along with them.

"It isn't anybody's," he replied, settling himself at one of the benches. "But you are welcome to share this shelter with me tonight, and to break bread at my table." Formalities taken care of, he reached into his pack for his own waybread and wineskin, fumbling a little bit in the shrouded darkness that his eyes could not easily penetrate.

Light steps at his shoulder, and the gray-cloaked stranger sat on the bench beside him; this close he caught a glimpse of pale skin on his face and hands, although he kept the hood drawn over his head. "May I pour for you then, grandfather?" the stranger said politely enough.

"I'm not your grandfather," he retorted. "But you can if you like." He handed over his wine gladly enough; he didn't really want to waste it by spilling it all over the table.

Unfortunately, once the wine had been poured, the stranger apparently took this for an open invitation to begin talking his ear off. "So, how are you doing?" he said. "I'm doing very well. It's a nice day, isn't it? I certainly think it is! It was cloudy this morning, but I think it's going to clear up overnight. What do you think?"

It was amazing, he thought, how much some people could talk without saying anything at all.

"What a lovely time to be traveling," the garralous stranger said, completely disregarding his lack of reply. "Are you also traveling, good sir? How do you find the roads? The roads are nice, but it's kind of a shame that everything is so barren and dead right now. Don't you think so?"

"It's winter," he couldn't help but point out, through a mouthful of bread and crumbled cheese.

The stranger nodded thoughtfully, as though he'd said something profound. "It is, isn't it? I guess you're right. That's too bad. Still, the best part of winter is that you can look forward to spring. I'm certainly looking forward to spring. Aren't you?"

At this point he was irritated enough to set down his meal and turn to face his annoyance head-on. "Are you actually talking to me, or just to yourself?" he demanded.

The stranger seemed taken aback, and it was a long moment before he answered, somewhat hesitantly, "... I'm talking to you."

" 'Cos at the rate you've been talking, there hasn't been room for me to get a word in," he pointed out. "Seems like you have more interest in the sound of your own voice than in anything I have to say."

"...No... no, that's - that's not true," the stranger objected, and a hint of anxiety leaked through his formerly sunny facade. "I want to hear what you have to say. Please."

He snorted. "What I have to say about what?"

_"Anything."_

The fervent, unhesitating reply took him aback, and he found himself oddly moved to pity. "Well..." he said, trying to gather up some words to share. He'd spent so long with no one to talk to at all, he really didn't remember the art of meaningless small talk any more. All he could find within himself to say were truths.

"I guess the weather doesn't really bother me," he said at last. "Never has. The way I see it, winter and summer, rain and sun, it's all part of the way the world moves. You can't shut yourself out of it without cutting yourself off from the world, and I'm done with that. I don't have so many seasons left in me that I can get fussed about liking one more than another." Having said his piece, he bit back into his waybread.

"So you are traveling... just to see the world, then?" his companion said slowly.

He shrugged. "I guess you could say that. See the world, meet new people."

"Do you like meeting new people?" the other man said hopefully.

That surprised an actual chuckle from him "Actually I can't stand most of 'em," he said with a snort. "But that isn't what's important, is it? It's not really about whether I like them or not."

He took another bite and chewed thoughtfully. "People are like the seasons; you can't change them just by complaining about it," he said. "You just have to take them as they come, the good and the bad. There's no other choice except to cut yourself off from the world, and I've had enough of being alone."

"Yes," the man said softly, almost inaudibly - as though he were talking to himself. "More than enough."

No question about it, this stranger was - well, _strange._ He squinted hard at the pale silhouette, as though he could penetrate that gray cloak just with the force of his stare. "So, how about you?" he prompted. "What are you on the road looking for?"

Taken aback, the stranger flailed around off-balance for a reply. "Well... uhm... uh... I thought I would travel to see... see exciting places," he stammered. "And... maybe I'll meet some family or, or some friends that I used to know or... I don't know... visit the different shrines I guess, maybe look at beautiful art..."

He rolled his eyes at the obviously false, weak excuses. "Well, you'd better figure it out fast, son," he told him firmly. "Trust me, you don't want to waste your time when you're young, wandering aimlessly around and waiting for a purpose to find _you_." He grimaced, thinking of all the years he'd lost trying to serve someone else's purpose. "That's a good way to waste years of your time. And while you're young now and you might think you'll live forever, you're wrong."

For a long moment his companion sat still on the bench, as though stuck in a trance, before he stirred. "...Oh, where are my manners?" he exclaimed. "Here I've been drinking your wine, but I haven't offered anything in return. I've been a terrible host. Won't you share in my meal, good sir?" He reached down to pluck his own luggage from somewhere - his pale hands moved too fast to quite make out from where - and set a package on the coarse wooden table to unwrap. "I don't have much, but I would be glad to give you this apple."

He held out his hands, cupped together in the last light of the fading sun, and the dying light caught as though afire on a rich golden globe held between his hands. It shone as though its skin were metal, the light clear enough to pierce even through the dark veil over his eyes.

For a moment he hesitated, and then he shrugged. "Sure, why not?" he said aloud, reaching out one wrinkled hand for the apple. "I won't turn down free food."

"It's very delicious," his companion said, and there was a strange note in his voice that hadn't been there before. "And healthy, too. It'll do you a world of good. Oh yes."

Something in his voice lent a certain amount of misgiving, but he ignored it. Surely no one would go to the trouble of poisoning an old vagabond just to steal a handful of copper _denari_ and half a loaf of bread.

And besides - his life was already nearly at its end. What did he have to lose?

The pale stranger leaned forward on the bench, his slim hands knotted anxiously together, as the old warrior took his first bite.

* * *

~end (for real.)


End file.
